What are Cyborgs good for?

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datadaniel
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What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by datadaniel »

I had always wondered a long time now what Cyborgs are good for?
:)
I know that they are cheap and fast moving so im using them most for picking up oildrums or artifact and clearing out small resistanse is it that they are made for?
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MaNiac
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by MaNiac »

Like you said, their cheap and move quickly. They are quite awesome if you mass loads of them.

What would be good is if you could design cyborgs like you can for tanks/vtols.
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by Craig »

generally i use them for hit and run tactics, especially the lancer and scorge varients, other times ill use the explosive cyborgs behind the heavy tanks to take out the tougher units or use them to hit buildings. ill use laser cyborgs alongside tanks because of their high damage to enemy tanks.
datadaniel
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by datadaniel »

Craig wrote:generally i use them for hit and run tactics, especially the lancer and scorge varients, other times ill use the explosive cyborgs behind the heavy tanks to take out the tougher units or use them to hit buildings. ill use laser cyborgs alongside tanks because of their high damage to enemy tanks.
Okey i think i get it :P

I personally like to bombard the enemy base with mortars and VTOLs and blow up vital buildings like defense hardpoints and powerplats and some building much as possible, and then i move in all my Machineguntanks,Antitankrockets and Cannons (all tanks) <-- My main tactic always lol

Is it better so send in Cyborgs with them or only Cyborgs instead of tanks?
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Cpt1Downie
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by Cpt1Downie »

yeah personally I use scourge borgs as antitank support, roll a few amongst the tanks, otherwise i use a scourge team to recon areas and act as a diversion (if they dont have sat, or near by sensors) it usualy pulls away a few tanks on their defence to let my main force roll on in lol.
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Zarel
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by Zarel »

The most important thing cyborgs are good for is that rockets/missiles do only 20% as much to them as they do to tanks, and cannons/rails only do 40% as much. Since these two are the staple weapons in multiplayer, a pure cyborg army can render a lot of your opponent's weapons mostly useless.
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whippersnapper
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by whippersnapper »

.

If you enjoy siming a RL maneuver experience (as opposed to being compelled to arcade "tactics".... which are fine if that's your thing).... then...

Combined arms Combat Groupings - in particular, several Grenadiers (for IF support to your LOS armor) and several Repair Borgs (to
offset damage being taken by your armor - on the spot). Keeping both these Borg Types behind your Tanks is key and not very easy. Having your
Combat Group Commander lead is helpful, in more ways than one. Having your Armor Command Screen set for max LOS range is also important.
Unfortunately, the Retreat Options are deficient in this sense - Retreat out of Enemy Fire Range would be best then your rear-guard Repair Borgs
could do their job to best effect (or better yet, Retreat to a player set Rally Point with Repair Borgs stationed -- which for me are way more effective
in the field than repair center facilities structures.. mobility, etc.

This brings up an important area of development - the Commands on the command UI and Control of Combat Groups. Both these will be more feasible once BetaWidget-LUA implementation is completed and afford the greatest opportunity to improve battlefield game play, IMO, by addressing these later mentioned command and control deficiencies.

Regards, whipper :)
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by TVR »

whippersnapper wrote:... If you enjoy siming a RL maneuver experience ...
There exists no realistic reasons to use infantry in open-field warfare, only in urban areas that are to be captured intact are infantry useful.

Cyborgs really do not have a place in Warzone 2100, the gameplay mechanics are not tuned to support suicidal human wave attacks, nor does backstory.
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by Revelo »

TVR wrote:Cyborgs really do not have a place in Warzone 2100, the gameplay mechanics are not tuned to support suicidal human wave attacks, nor does backstory.
This is what i thought about Cyborgs. My experience with them was that they were destroyed too quickly to be made effective, even being used as a support role. I probably wasn't using them right but once I got them and tried them out my reaction was:

"Hang on. I just spent 9 missions trying to get this 'vital technology'?"

I figured it was a waste of time and power getting them when I had tanks to utilize. I binned them immediately and once I got VTOL's i used them in tandem with artillery and tanks and starting trying to work out how to mod the Cyborgs to dance the robot behind the frontlines. No luck as of now...

I managed to bear the time it took to get Cyborgs once I decided it was better The Project had the technology rather than anyone else, even though everyone else did. I'm not saying they are crap overall. I just can't get them to be used effectively.
Last edited by Revelo on 13 Jun 2009, 04:24, edited 1 time in total.
Read my review of Warzone 2100 here!
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.115500
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whippersnapper
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by whippersnapper »

TVR wrote:
"whippersnapper" wrote: If you enjoy siming a RL maneuver experience ...

There exists no realistic reasons to use infantry in open-field warfare, only in urban areas that are to be captured intact are infantry useful.

Cyborgs really do not have a place in Warzone 2100, the gameplay mechanics are not tuned to support suicidal human wave attacks, nor does backstory.
.
I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, Not something you gave me, assuming I was blowing gas through through a sphincter hole as
opposed to being a fairly informed individual on the subjects that comprised my post.

First - your counter has little to do with my comment as a whole or even what you chose to quote out of context.

However, I will still grant you the courtesy of having something to bring to the table that supports your statement. As it is now, it comes off
purely a collection of declarations with scant foundation I can discern..

Please do back it up with some objective evidence (if you can), then we'll have a conversation. ;)

I can,of course,present a subtantive quantity of objective evidence for my PoV, from RL military to RTS GPM design to being intimately
involved with most things WZ since pre-Spring '99, but only if this becomes a fun, rigorous & interesting conversation - the types
I prefer to cultivate.

Ball's in your court. :D

Regards, whipper :ninja:
.
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estefaz
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by estefaz »

Hi

In singleplayer gampaign the cyborgs are crap. Of course they are. You can run through all campaign parts without even loosing one tank. But if you use them, you will surely have to build lots of them to replenish the ranks. Cyborgs are designed for multiplayer and skirmish.


A Cyborg always has to be protected by some tanks. Thats what tanks are good for. If you build a group of tanks, sum what you paid for them and build some cyborgs for the same amount of energy - their firepower is superior, their armor is not.

Lancer, Tankkiller and Scourge Cyborgs are a nice backup for your tanks, enhancing your firepower during assaults and providing you with a mobile anti-air that actually does its job. If you are not rushing for anti-air or vtol, a few of them can save you if someone else did. Someone who is cannonfodder now...

Mortar cyborgs are fine early in the game - again, if they are protected by tanks.

Personally i rarely use the other cyborg types. Maybe some heavy gunners early on, if i want to rush something or to guard oil platforms. I never use the heavy variants of the cyborgs - no cost efficiency as they do not bring much firepower, cost loads of energy and move too slow.

greets, manu
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whippersnapper
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by whippersnapper »

estefaz wrote:Hi

In singleplayer gampaign the cyborgs are crap. Of course they are. You can run through all campaign parts without even loosing one tank. But if you use them, you will surely have to build lots of them to replenish the ranks. Cyborgs are designed for multiplayer and skirmish.


A Cyborg always has to be protected by some tanks. Thats what tanks are good for. If you build a group of tanks, sum what you paid for them and build some cyborgs for the same amount of energy - their firepower is superior, their armor is not.

Lancer, Tankkiller and Scourge Cyborgs are a nice backup for your tanks, enhancing your firepower during assaults and providing you with a mobile anti-air that actually does its job. If you are not rushing for anti-air or vtol, a few of them can save you if someone else did. Someone who is cannonfodder now...

Mortar cyborgs are fine early in the game - again, if they are protected by tanks.

Personally i rarely use the other cyborg types. Maybe some heavy gunners early on, if i want to rush something or to guard oil platforms. I never use the heavy variants of the cyborgs - no cost efficiency as they do not bring much firepower, cost loads of energy and move too slow.

greets, manu
Much of that I agree with (see my very short post).... it is true and can be substantiated.... it just is NOT the whole truth.

A campaign's scripting is in many ways like the writing of a story and the way the original campaign is constructed it is SLANTED for borg
failure under most conditions created by the campaign scripting...

BUT - we now have more than just the one original campaign. We also have Black Project's "Hardcore Mode Mod" of the Campaign were in the
scripting allows for a very different outcome. Briefly - if you do NOT make effective use of Borgs you will LOSE every time.

Let's take the construction of Borgs a step further than Pumpkin did in their retail release - which is what we did when involved in the creation of
Mods v.1.11 and v.1.12. Pumpkin didn't care for the way "Jump Borgs" looked - they thought they looked like hopping rabbits. A lot of us
were not bothered by that at all so we went ahead and implemented them first in v.1.11 along with a Sniper Borg and assorted Cyborg Gunships.
Talk about Borgs realizing their full potential instead of being suppressed. Almost 10 years after its creation v.1.11 is still a favorite amongst veteran
clan players. So is v.1.12 as much of it was incorporated in another MP Mod given a different name and part of the official distro for some time. The
Borgs in v.1.12 where even more expanded and useful.... like those that lay "Mines" & Mine Sweepers...

In skirmish... BP can beat most players with just Borgs and BP does not cheat which means BP "knows" how to use Borgs better than most players.
Same for the "Turtle" a.i. in many cases.

The point of all that is that the "Truth" of the Borg experience in WZ game play is far, far, richer than the simplified statements being made of late here.

As to the RL Military statements (about infantry in particular) - some are just plain wrong and wrong going back from this very moment in time clear through 3000+ years of recorded war history. And let's not forget that an AT 4 which costs about 30k can take-out a tank that costs 30 million. A tank column accompanied by APCs-Infantry... that's puttering along an open war field is much concerned about it's fuel supply line just to make it through another day of being able to maneuver and not be a flock of sitting ducks for a handful of Guerrilla Infantry, under cover of night from a modest elevation with night vision goggles,. Objective Force Warrior battle suits and a couple AT 4s (with PGMs) & XM312s (with armor piercing rounds that can make Swiss cheese of a tank's propulsion in short order.... ) Infantry can also control UAVs or MUAVs or UGVs, with or without weap packages but surely as stealth Intel platforms, from hand held comps)... All this means that the original Borgs in WZ are bad design and NOT a reflection of what is possible in RL or in the proven GPMs of the aforementioned WZ Mods.

Regards, whipper :)
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by TVR »

whippersnapper wrote:... And let's not forget that an AT 4 which costs about 30k can take-out a tank that costs 30 million.
Armour is cheap, 4.35 million for a M1A1 Abrams; armour is durable, tanks are meant to take enemy 120mm HEAT & KE projectiles with plenty of reactive bricks, composite/spaced armour, point defence, and some slabs of depleted uranium, a tiny 84mm recoilless rocket is useless with only 400 mm of penetration against armour that provides 900 mm protection.

While engagement of an AFV head-on is futile, flanking is extremely difficult against a armoured line formation, tanks have greater fuel reserves and jet turbine engines in comparison to APCs, and track damage can easily be mended in comparison to people, who need to be replaced because they are simply cannon fodder in open-field warfare.
whippersnapper wrote:... under cover of night from a modest elevation with night vision goggles,. Objective Force Warrior battle suits and a couple AT 4s (with PGMs) & XM312s ...
A couple IR opaque smoke grenades protect armour from IR imaging, while indirect, ballistic HE shells trivialize elevation disadvantages.

Given a Warzone 2100 post-nuclear perspective, no cover that can withstand a few shells, and with less than a million people on the planet, using people as cannon fodder is ridiculously expensive and ineffectual in comparison to mass produced AFVs with AI cores.
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whippersnapper
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by whippersnapper »

TVR wrote:
Armour is cheap, 4.35 million for a M1A1 Abrams; armour is durable, tanks are meant to take enemy 120mm HEAT & KE projectiles with plenty of reactive bricks, composite/spaced armour, point defence, and some slabs of depleted uranium, a tiny 84mm recoilless rocket is useless with only 400 mm of penetration against armour that provides 900 mm protection.

While engagement of an AFV head-on is futile, flanking is extremely difficult against a armoured line formation, tanks have greater fuel reserves and jet turbine engines in comparison to APCs, and track damage can easily be mended in comparison to people, who need to be replaced because they are simply cannon fodder in open-field warfare.

A couple IR opaque smoke grenades protect armour from IR imaging, while indirect, ballistic HE shells trivialize elevation disadvantages.


You really need to do a more thorough job of research on ACTUAL combat events which is not the same as your theoretical suppositions of how things should work out if the world cooperated with favorable idealizations on the ground - ie. Metis-M AT system, 2006, Hezbollah, Lebanon War... 'enough said. O_o (got scores more recent combat events to illustrate, if needed)

In the meanwhile here's a gallery of photos of knocked out and destroyed M1A1 Abrams in Iraq....

I wanna see for myself !

Wonder just how the insurgents are managing that ? O_O Should I spell-out the Guerrilla Tacs used to exploit tank vulnerabilities with low tech resources ?
TVR wrote:
Given a Warzone 2100 post-nuclear perspective, no cover that can withstand a few shells, and with less than a million people on the planet, using people as cannon fodder is ridiculously expensive and ineffectual in comparison to mass produced AFVs with AI cores.
Just one of many possible scenario outcomes by way of science-based forecasting (still guesswork the opposite of dogma).

Here's a VERY short reading list that deals with all the available scientific data from which many different scenario outcomes can be extrapolated and on which I in turn used to arrive at my equally valid, but very different, position, for the sake of what amounts to an entertaining FICTION -

.

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War by Eileen Welsome

Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy by Philip L. Fradkin

Under The Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing by Richard L. Miller

American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War by Carole Gallagher

Medical Implications of Nuclear War by National Academy Press

Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West by Len Ackland

Worldwide Effects Of Nuclear War by U.S. Arms Control And Disarmament Agency

The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War by Paul R. Ehrlich & Carl Sagan

Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo by George H. Quester

The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West by Valerie Kuletz

The Navajo People and Uranium Mining by Doug Brugge

U.s. Armed Forces Nuclear, Biological And Chemical Survival Manual by Dick Couch & John Boswell

Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know by Jeremy Bernstein

The Doomsday Scenario: How America Ends by Douglas Keeney

Yellowcake Towns (Mining the American West) by Michael A. Amundson

On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site by Michele Gerber

Under The Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing by Richard L. Miller

The Social Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster by David R. Marples

20 Years After the Chernobyl Accident: Past, Present And Future by Elena B. Burlakova

Children of Chernobyl : Raising Hope from the Ashes by Michael J. Christensen & M.Carter

Nuclear War Survival Skills Updated and Expanded Edition by Cresson H. Kearny

On Thermonuclear War by Herman Kahn and Evan Jones

Uranium Frenzy: Saga of the Nuclear West by Raye Ringholz

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich K. Gessen

The Legacy of Chernobyl by Zhores A. Medvedev

Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter by Igor Kostin

Chernobyl Record: The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe by R.F Mould

The Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report by Barbara Rose Johnston

Chernobyl: The Hidden Legacy by Pierpaolo Mittica

The Effects of Nuclear War by Office of Technology Assessment and Congress of the United States

Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl by Adriana Petryna

Chernobyl: The Ongoing Story of the World's Deadliest Nuclear Disaster by Glenn Alan Cheney

Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident by William McKeown

Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth by Alla Yaroshinskaya, Michell Kahn and Julia Sallabank

Chernobyl Legacy by Magdalena Caris and Paul Fusco

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War by Eileen Welsome

The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War by Bruce G. Blair

Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers: The Passive Defence of the Western World During the Cold War by Nick McCamley

Nuclear War Survival Manual, Protection In The Nuclear Age by FEMA

Chernobyl: Catastrophe and Consequences by Jim Smith and Nicholas A. Beresford

Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III by Willliam Scott & Michael Coumatos

Life After Doomsday by Bruce Clayton

The Truth About Chernobyl by Grigori Medvedev

The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico by Joseph Masco

Face to Face with the Bomb: Nuclear Reality after the Cold War by Paul Shambroom and Professor Richard Rhodes

Nuclear Insights: The Cold War Legacy Volume 1: Nuclear Weaponry (An Insider History) by Alexander DeVolpi

Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War by Hugh Gusterson

Teach Us to Live: Stories From Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Diana Wickes Roose

Silent Steel: The Mysterious Death of the Nuclear Attack Sub USS Scorpion by Stephen Johnson

Hiroshima Diary: The Unparalleled Eyewitness Account of the Dawn of Nuclear War by Michiko M. D. Hachiya

This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War by David F. Krugler

The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War by Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi

Nuclear War: From Hiroshima to Nuclear Winter by Lawrence Pringle

To Win A Nuclear War by Daniel Axelrod

Hell's Fire: A Documentary History of the American Atomic and Thermonuclear Weapons Projects, From Hiroshima to the Cold War and the War on Terror by Lenny Flank

Atomic Fossils: A Story of War and Deliverance in the Nuclear Age by Stephen Dustin

The Day After Midnight: The Effects of Nuclear War by Michael Riordan
Regards, whipper :D
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EDIT: The brief essay that accompanied the original posting of my frames of reference above...
-------------------->


We are all entitled to our opinion or artistic vision. But there are qualitative differences as in
informed opinion or vision. In my case, informed by the best science has to offer
(in addition to the crafting artistic integrity invokes).

Most opinions on Nuke Winter, Post Nuke Apocalypse or Armageddon, that I've come across
over the years in regards to WZ 2100 are informed by movies like the "Road Warrior" or
"Terminator" series, Sci Fi stories like "The Stand", "On the Beach", "Alas Babylon", TV shows,
Graphic Novels and Comics, and other vid games...... In other words - Artistic Visions.
And that's fine up until peeps start speaking with the conviction of dogma. That's where I draw
the line and dismiss those types of opinion as lazy, ill-informed, and not worth the attention given
impartial authority. Beyond being intellectually annoying these pious pronouncements are artistically
stultifying, which is an even worse offense, imho. In short, rubbish and humbug, those type utterances

I too have seen many of the movies and TV shows and have also read a lot of the Sci-Fi stories,
& played games like the "Fallout" series, on this subject. But in my fictive work I go back to the
Primary Science Sources for my inspiration and informed opinion as opposed to merely relying
on the filtered artistic vision of others (Tertiary sources), regardless of how much I may enjoy and esteem,
particular fictive works and their artistry.

I could post my NET primary sources here as I did on the topic of game balance in my
"Future of RTS" thread. Instead I will list my primary sources in book form that I have
studied over the years on this topic and deeply inform my WZ work inclusive of this project,
"War School" and the clarifying, speculative, details I've posted so far on back story, etc....

ALL the works listed can be corroborated with Primary Sources on the Web.... just use Google
if reading non-fiction books is not your thing for whatever reason.. And, btw, Wikipedia alone
does not qualify as a primary source.

** And for a broad spectrum of artistic visions on the subject that are also quite entertaining I
would recommend the following 2 anthologies of fiction:

- "Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse" edited by Stephen King, Cory Doctorow, George R. R. Martin, and Octavia E. Butler

- "Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984" edited by Paul Brians

The long and short of all this is that there is NO authoritative artistic vision and that even when it
comes to the hard science there is no exclusive pat answer - just probabilities and educated
guesses that for obvious reasons cannot be tested on a global scale for definitive assessments.
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Re: What are Cyborgs good for?

Post by TVR »

whippersnapper wrote: 2006, Hezbollah, Lebanon War...
Those are not examples of open-field warfare, non-military structures are protected by Hague conventions and other rules of engagement, therefore they are not targeted and remain standing.
whippersnapper wrote:... Wonder just how the insurgents are managing that ? ... Guerrilla Tacs used ...
Insurgency with anti-tank mines placed on patrol routes in a built up area, tactics which do not apply to an assault with combat engineering equipment.
whippersnapper wrote:... Just one of many possible scenario outcomes by way of science-based forecasting ...
You are challenging canon, the premise of less than a million people on the planet is declared in a statement from the opening monologue.
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