The Birdmen Guide to the Galaxy
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/(_W_)\ C h a p t e r 7 /(_W_)\
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/ \/MvM\/ \ S N E A K Y C O M B A T T A C T I C S / \/MvM\/ \
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About doing what you're designed to do: attack!
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<====== 7.1 Towing ships ================================================>
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Destroy large enemy fleets ship by ship. Wait till a fleet arrives at a
planet, or predict their course and tow the ships to your waiting fleets of
Dark Wings and Resolutes.
Perfect way to remove defending ships from planets/starbases.
If your opponent is already used to you towing ships from planets and
starbases into midspace and intercepts his ships with large battleships,
change your tactic: try to get a MBR and tow an enemy > 81 LY. It will keep
your enemy busy for a couple of turns adjusting to your new strategy and
rearranging his ships and tactics...
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<====== 7.2 Creative use of the NUK FC ==================================>
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[For old versions of host and phost only!]
Imagine an enemy starbase defended by a large number of heavily armed
battleships....
You use your scouts and lock the FC to 'NUK'. Your fleet of Dark Wings are
waiting just outside the warpwell, they transfer their fuel to another
cloaking ship and move without fuel to the enemy starbase.
Your ships will be ignored by the enemy battleships because they don't have
fuel, but the starbase is set to NUK and will be destroyed by your fleet.
(Use the cloaking fueltank to refuel and repair (supplies) your Dark Wings.
Note:
This won't work for the newer versions of both host and phost, i.e. Birdmen
ships with weapons and without fuel are immune to the planetary NUK friendly
code.
Let it be clear that this is an undocumented feature - it can't be found in
the (host) docs. [8,10]
When two enemy players are playing in co-operation, try to set the FC of
the planet/starbase of enemy A to ATT or NUK the turn a battleship/fleet of
enemy B arrives on that planet/starbase. Watch the fleet destroy the
starbase/planet or vice versa - it doesn't matter: any which way you win!
[Obviously this won't work for allies in host v3.22.007 (and higher) and
PHost.]
* Don't forget to leave orbit in case if your ships get decloaked by an Ion
Discharge, or else your ships might get fried too.
* If the planet/starbase gets toasted, return to the planet (cloaked) and
perform a Ground Attack with the 5 - 20 clans you always carry in your
cargohold...
[This works all the time...!]
There is a Bird tactic that is still being bandied about in the newsgroups and
on BBSes. This is offered as a devastating attack on a well-guarded and
fortified enemy Starbase. The tactic is to have five Superspying ships set
the Base's code to "NUK" while two Darkwings arrive without fuel (either
through careful planning or being towed in by sacrifice ships). The Base will
then attack the Darkwings and be destroyed while the enemy ships guarding the
base ignore the Darkwings because they're out of fuel. The problem with this
tactic is that it doesn't work. Any Bird capital ship that is out of fuel is
immune to the "NUK" code and therefore will not be attacked by the
planet/base.
What will work, however, is giving the two Darkwings to an ally (other than
Fascists or Rebels) and having them arrive empty. Note that the Darkwings, or
any other heavy warships being used, have to arrive at the base empty the
same turn that the five Superspying ships change the code to "NUK." If
instead, the Darkwings arrive early and drop their fuel, and the enemy has
the Base set to "Force Surrender," the enemy will take control of the empty
ships before they can attack the base.
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<====== 7.3 Ambush ======================================================>
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If a large unstoppable fleet is coming your way, setup an ambush on your own
planet/starbase. When an enemy fleet arrives, break up the fleet into smaller
pieces and smash them at your will.
(For the desperate only. You don't want any enemy in your place, go play in
their territory.)
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<====== 7.4 Carriers and your Starbases =================================>
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A fully stocked starbase and a Dark Wing can take care of most of those
monster carriers. Starbases are the best defence for a Birdmen player,
especially when the ship limit is reached. And if the enemy battleship won't
come near your base, tow it to the base using a White Falcon or a Dark Wing
(when you don't want to lose the White Falcon).
Some Lizard and Fed carriers can get away if they are really lucky - all other
big carriers will be destroyed.
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<====== 7.5 Glory Devices ===============================================>
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When dealing with the Fascists or any race that uses Glory Devices, send in a
Scout. If it blows, go in and look for damaged cloak capable ships, they are
an easy target now. Tow them from his starbase and destroy them in mid-space.
(Easier than waiting for those cloaking ships to intercept attack your own
ships or to get hit in a minefield.)
There is a great chance that the player would use the starbase FIX mission to
repair one ship a turn, so if there are multiple cloak capable ships on that
base they will be an easy target.
Note:
An expert player would probably carry supplies in his ships to repair the GD
damage instantly, or keep a second non-triggered GD as backup in case the
first one blows...
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<====== 7.6 Freighter Hunting ===========================================>
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This should be a standard thing to do for every Birdmen player: disrupt your
enemies economy by capturing/destroying all his freighters. Use Swift Hearts
to intercept freighters in mid-space or use White Falcons to tow those
freighters out of orbit into mid-space. Arm them with X-ray lasers.
* Beware of traps when intercepting, your enemy might intercept his own
freighters too.
* Swift Hearts are cheaper, but the 140 kT cargohold of the White Falcons
opens more possibilities:
- if you capture a freighter with clans, you might perform a ground attack on
a planet/starbase with a low population.
- if you capture a freighter with minerals (and MC), you could restock your
torp supply in mid-space and lay this minefield in the enemies shipping
routes.
* What to do with a captured freighter?
- You could set it's mission to Sensor Sweep or Mine Sweep, and thus giving
you the opportunity to gather information while you can cloak again.
You could do this for instance for one turn by giving the freighter 1 kT of
fuel and to set the waypoint so that the freighter will run out of fuel at
the end of the turn.
- You could move it a few LY and put your cloaked ship at the same
coordinates. If the freighter has fuel and the enemy intercepts the it, you
will see the armament of the new enemy ship. If your ship is a good match,
tow the new ship and capture/destroy it. (The freighter is even more
damaged, or destroyed, and won't get very far. Get it later.)
- If the freighter doesn't have fuel and the enemy intercepts it, it won't
fight. You will then decide what to do: 1. tow/attack the new ship, 2. let
the freighter be towed away to surrender, 3. transfer 1 kT of fuel to the
freighter and let it get captured/destroyed by the new ship/another ship/
an enemy starbase.
- If you let the freighter be captured again/let the fuelless freighter
surrender at a starbase you will be able to recapture it later when it's
filled again...
When the enemy doesn't have that much freighters he will have to re-use the
ship instead of recycling it. This gives you the change to recapture it
when it's cargohold is full.
Anyway, your opponent will have to waste several turns with a 2-engine ship
to recapture the freighter and then repair it at a starbase...
That ship won't be used against you!
- Be aware if you let the freighter be captured again by the enemy, or even
destroyed, the enemy will get Priority Build Points. (1 PBP for capturing -
host 3.22.007 and older)
- If you don't want to let the enemy get his hands on the freighter again,
there are two very effective destructive methods: 1. colonise the freighter
on an uninhabited (amorphous?) planet or a planet that you've captured on
your enemy. This will give you 1 PBP but on the other hand when the enemy
colonises the planet he will be able to use/beam up the minerals. 2. Smash
the freighter into an enemy minefield. It will explode even if it doesn't
have fuel. You won't get anything, but neither will he. Perfect, fast and
deadly.
* Often a player will make a mistake of killing anything with the name
"freighter" in it's name just because it's an easy kill. Don't be too
trigger happy, Look at the ship first. Is it full or empty? An empty
freighter is a useless catch, follow it to a planet, it will be full and
worth much more. A favourite tactic of mine is to jettison all the cargo and
then drive it at full speed towards the nearest minefield with it's mission
to "mine sweep". This does a few things: 1. updates minefield info, 2.
destroys freighter and 3. freaks out opponent if he manages to capture it
("where'd all the Moly on board go? aaargh!!!") [9]
* Advanced Freighter Killing
This tactic takes a bit of practice to perfect, but is devastating in the
right hands. First off, what are things that can go wrong with freighter
killing? Right, escorts and minefields. You forgot one, though: the
freighter itself.
1. Freighter: an experienced player will usually never set a waypoint over 3
months in a straight line. What that means is that if a planet is 120 LY
away and the freighter is doing warp 7, he will not travel in a straight line
towards the planet. He will probably move his target up or down a few LYs.
This is called "zigging" and it makes life hell for the privateers who try to
land on top of ships and rob them, but that's another story. What we want to
do is get in the way of the ship and "zig" in front of it. How we do that
is, sit about 100 LY away of the planet, between where the freighter is and
where it's going. Turn 1, you are cloaked and see it moving towards you,
heading for a base or something. Look at it. Does it have an escort? No? Is
it full or empty? If you suspect that it's carrying cash, hit it anyway. Set
mission for Intercept freighter, and set warp speed to 4. Now this gives you
a 16 LY radius to intercept the freighter in.
Some people forget the warp 4 part and leave their speed at warp 9. Then they
are surprised when the freighter heads in a completely different direction
and they ram a mine after travelling 81 LY through the field. Leave the
brakes on, if you miss you will not go zooming after it (and probably not
catch it).
2. Escort: So, your enemy is getting desperate, is he? Escorts are the best
sign in the world that the war is going badly for him. Anyone who needs to
devote a capital ship to secure a load of minerals in his own space is
getting desperate. So cheer up, the war is going well. Run a few sims and
see if you can take the escort, second, run the sim and see what happens if
you intercept the freighter, then get blown up, then HE fights his own
freighter. If he doesn't blow it up, don't bother - all you'll have done is
some damage to his freighter, which he can fix at the next stop or
starbase.[9]
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<====== 7.7 Conquering planets ==========================================>
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* An Resolute with Heavy Blasters or higher and Mark 4 torps or higher can
take out every medium populated sized non-starbase planet. It can even
destroy a starbase with less 30 starbase fighters without taking damage
(Depending on the shield, host configurable). It will blow on a planet with
350 defence posts.
* White Falcons, Fearless Wings and Deth Specula's aren't afraid of planets
too. Use high tech torps on the 1 torp ships, and Heavy Blasters when there
are a lot of planetary defence units.
* If the planet is deep in enemy territory, or on a location where the enemy
can reconquer it quickly, completely _waste_ the planet:
- If there are natives, set the native tax to 100% for two or three turns -
it will make the planet useless for at least 10 turns. No tax income, and
the rioting natives will destroy planetary structures and eventually will
begin to kill colonists! (They will kill your clan, and when the planet
becomes inhibited the native happiness will remain the same. When the
planet is recolonised, a percentage of the first colonists will be killed
immediately.)
- If there are enough minerals and cash for a starbase, build the starbase
and remove your clan. Next turn the starbase will be build and crash. This
way you will destroy 420 kT Tritanium, 120 kT Duranium, 340 Molybdenum and
900 MC at the same time!
* You might follow another approach: if the enemy is a fighter-race, he might
use the minerals on the planet to restock his fighter supply when he
reconquers the planet. Simply remove all Tritanium or Molybdemum from the
planet - whichever is less. If the enemy is a torp race, choose one of the
minerals and dump it in space. If there are enough minerals on the planet for
a starbase and you want that planet and the starbase later, just temporarily
remove one critical mineral from the surface. (Wait for your backup: a load
of clans and/or lots of cash and/or a captured carrier (or cloaked Red Wind)
with fighters for the future starbase.)
Keep an eye on the minerals in the core and the number of mines!
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<====== 7.8 Cloaked ships attack ========================================>
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Use the 'Cloaked ships attack' host setting to your benefit: If you stay
cloaked with several warships over a enemy starbase you will be capable to
attack his newly built ships if the starbase orders are set to Refuel. Then
you will attack his ships that will have no torps or fighters on board. This
will surely work early in the game when the enemy HomeWorld has plenty of
fuel.
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<====== 7.9 Cloak Prevent Damage ========================================>
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Use the 'Cloak Prevent Damage' host setting!
Try to carry a cargo of supplies inside your cargo bays. It will repair some
damage after combat and your ship might be cloaked again at the end of the
turn.
Note that the supply-repair is scattered around the battle order:
- repair
- move (minehits!)
- repair
- glory device
- repair
- ship vs. ship combat
- repair
- ship vs. planet combat
- repair
However, cloak-checking is only done at the beginning and end of the turn, so
if you take a mine-hit or glory device explosion during the turn, you will
repair prior to combat, but will not be cloaked.[8]
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<====== 7.10 Steal minerals from a planet with a Starbase ===============>
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[Use with caution and read carefully!]
For this to work you need 5 cheap ships to do SuperSpy and to change the FC.
For the beam up you will gather as many ships as you want. But you will need
the same number of ships to tow them.
Here's the deal: Move the entire fleet to the target starbase. Put the 5 cheap
ships in orbit with a common FC and all on SuperSpy. Transfer all fuel from
the gather ships to the towers, set their FC to the common FC and the mission
to Gather Anything. Let the towers set their FC to something different than
the common FC and let each tow one of your now fuelless gather ships out of
orbit.
Result: The ships gather minerals since even without fuel they gather with
matching FCs. The towers will tow the now stocked transporters out of orbit.
Transfer fuel to the transporters and carry the minerals to your own bases.
If the SB is set on 'Force a surrender' the fuelless ships (transporters)
will go to the enemy. Then the transporters are towed to one of your nearby
Starbase to surrender. The enemy will surely dump the minerals into space
since they are his ships now. You will lose the minerals, but heck - he
doesn't have them and that's what you wanted eh? [2]
If you planet-hop constantly, the enemy can no dump the minerals in space.
Notes:
* Don't beam up fuel! Tritanium, Duranium and Molybdenum only! And supplies -
if you really need them :-)
* Think of this strategy when you're allied to the Privs or the Crystals. Let
them tow/capture the fuelless transporters. Success guaranteed!
* If your ships surrendered to the enemy starbase, and the enemy already got
his hands on a cloaker, he might anticipate to which starbase you will bring
his new cloakers to surrender. Using this cloaker he will wait in orbit for
his fuelless cloakers to come: he will transfer fuel to all fuelless cloakers
and they won't surrender, they will even fly away or engage combat.
* If your starbase is just one turn away from his, your enemy doesn't have to
change to drop the minerals. It might even be worth to build that temporary
starbase... Try using Gravitronic Accelerated ships to shorten the distance.
* This tactic will cost you a lot of resources: time, fuel and ships. On the
other hand you will be able to completely strip an enemy starbase of minerals.
The more transporters you use, the more effective and economical it will be.
Say if you would use 5 Fearless Wings to beam up minerals, you will need 5
other 2-engine ships and the ships to set the FC, 15 in total!
* Set the FC to 'bum' and you'll get his money too!
* This tactic uses a lot of resources. Use it wisely and not to often - you'd
spend your time better using those 15 ships for freighter hunting!
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<====== 7.11 Using (Moving) Minefields ==================================>
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* Minefields are a very effective defence against cloakers. Even when you play
the Birdmen you occasionally might want to lay some when you have cloaking
neighbours/ enemies. When laid from a cloaking ship this effectiveness gets
multiplied by a unexpectedness factor: such a minefield can be really
devastating. To increase the unexpectedness, the mines of a newly laid
minefield can be scooped up again next turn to be used again later as another
minefield. This is what is called 'Moving Minefields'. (Of course Moving
Minefields can also be created by non-cloaking ships.)
* The ideal situation is to have two cloaking vessels with a large cargohold.
(Resolutes or else Fearless Wings). The two ships fly together all the time.
The first vessel having its cargohold stocked with torps will decloak and lay
this _enourmous_ minefield. The next turn the first vessel will cloak again
and the second vessel will scoop the mines up again.
* Very clear until now eh? Let's continue and refine this scheme a bit: To be
able to continue laying this moving minefield you will have to take some
action to preserve your mines/torpedo's as your opponent will try to sweep
it, and if he succeeds you will have to return to your base/planets and spend
more cash on torps :-(
This can easily be prevented when you know the order of actions: minesweeping
happens by ship ID, the ship having a lower ID sweeping first. So the only
thing you will have to do is to arrange one low ID Resolute (or Fearless Wing)
with high tech torps. (A Resolute ID#1 would be ultimate, and a ship with an
ID between 1 and 25 would do alright.)
First turn, let the Resolute with the higher ID convert all its torps into
mines. Next, transfer all cargo from the low ID Resolute to the high ID
Resolute (another set of 280 torps!) and scoop the minefield up in the
cargohold of the low ID Resolute.
* This way your minefield can only be destroyed by an enemy minefield (if the
'mines destroy enemy mines' host setting is on), or by an enemy vessel
sweeping it by pure luck. Usually all enemy ships that do not have anything
else to do will be on a minesweep mission. So there is a good chance that
they could get lucky.
* Two remarks: if the enemy sets all his ships to Mine Sweep, he can't cloak
or do anything else, and if he used his ships in pairs to sweep/cloak on a
turn he will bind a lot of resources (ships) to your waiting Resolutes.
280 Mark 8 will make 10 x 10 x 280 = 28000 mines. A MBR, or LCC, or Saurian
with 4 Heavy Phasers will sweep 10 x 10 x 4 x 4 = 1600 mines at a time (host
default settings). Your enemy will sure need a lot of those ships (working in
pairs) to try to sweep your minefield!)
Expect non-cloaking battleships armed with Heavy Phasers.
Second, if your enemy decides to destroy the minefield by laying another
minefield that is as large as yours, it will cost him as much as you, with
this respect that his reaction is provoked by you and that he will be
withdrawing resources from other projects. Until then, you will be able to
harass him with your minefield.
* And what the hell, if he destroys your minefield you will still have the
other set of torps, don't you? :-)
* How to get a low ID Resolute? Well, the turn you know for sure you're going
to get a lot of PBPs, try building Resolutes only on all your starbases.
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<====== 7.12 Using good baits ===========================================>
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You can use baits (a resolute without fuel in mid space) to get enemy ships,
just keep a Dark Wing or two cloaked at the same place with PE set to your
enemy... A Resolute is a NICE bait to many races.. Also keep a Swift Heart
without PE set, so you can transfer fuel if all Dark Wings are killed!
Please note that this doesn't work well against other cloakers and especially
no against the Privateers. They will sneak up on your ship and tow it away!
If the 'zero fuel moves' host setting is on, keep your empty Resolute and
cloaked Dark Wings moving for a few LY a turn to prevent any cloaker to
approach then without coming out of cloak to intercept them.
If somebody smells the trap and intercepts you with one or several heavy
carriers your ships are history anyway.
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<====== 7.13 Cloaking your entire empire ================================>
<============================================================================>
Everyone laughs when they read that the Birdmen would cloak a planet if they
could, but few know that we CAN and DO cloak entire empires (sorta).
TimHost and PHost both have ranges for planet and sensor sweep settings. These
are default 200 LY, meaning that each planet and each ship can see a maximum
distance of 200 LY. Now, what if you have 50 Dark Wings uncloaked 201 LY
away? That's right, they're invisible. Now wouldn't it be nice to know
where that 200 LY "border" is? The answer is simple: put cloaking scouts at
your borders, or 100 LY beyond your borders, and leave them there. Any ships
you see approaching can be dealt with as you see fit.
Hyper-probes will continue to be a problem, my only advice is get your defence
posts to "un-scannable" size as soon as possible (15 in TimHost, PHost is
configurable).[9]
You'll need 20 defence posts to be immune from Bioscanners.[10]
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<====== 7.14 Enemy starbases ============================================>
<============================================================================>
Starbases can't move. Warships can. Take out Starbases whenever possible.
True, you might lose the planet again later on, but the economic damage is
significant. For the one turn you hold it, make sure to:
- Convert all the supplies into money and beam it up.
- Set native tax rate to 100% and watch them tear down whatever is still
standing. Plus, the enemy won't be able to build that many factories with
the natives still running around with axes, and cash will be scarce.[9]
It is sometimes better to ignore a starbase and go after the real economic or
tactical targets. You should differentiate between reall productive starbases
(usually over resourceful planets) and the purely fighting starbase over
otherwise unimportant planets, which have been build only as non-moving
carriers to knock out your ships.[11]
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<====== 7.15 Cloaking all your ships ====================================>
<============================================================================>
Someone suggested staying hidden no matter what the cost, and recommended
using Fearless Wings as cloaking freighters. I'm not too sure about that
advice, I mean, is 200 kT Molybdenum worth the extra 10 kT fuel it takes per
turn to cloak it? On a large scale, you would need 5 Fearless Wings for every
large freighter. That's expensive and time consuming, both production and
material-wise. And there are also Super Transport Freighters.
When the above tactic is useful:
Let's say that you live next to a lazy player. He has expanded to a certain
size but never got around to colonising that cluster up near the edge of the
map. Your scouts have been through there and report some decent mineral
planets and a few natives. You decide that you want that sector.
One Fearless Wing will be enough for this "mission". Basically you want is to
be able to set up shop in one or two turns and not be caught with your "pants
down". You may want 1 or 2 Dark Wings along for protection just in case of
cloak failure, etc.
Depending on the range of the target, you may wish to add another Fearless
Wing solely as a cloaked fuel reserve. Your range with a fully loaded
Fearless Wing will be about 3-4 months depending on engines used.
Your Fearless Wing should be hold:
100 colonists 140 supplies 850 credits.
Once you are in orbit, beam down everything. Build 15 defence posts and 100
factories. You will have 400 credits left over, next turn take that and the
100 supplies you just made and build 100 mines.
There you have it - you're weak, poor, but undetected.
I did the calculations for a fully-built starbase in one turn but deemed it
too expensive (5 Fearless Wings, all of them fully loaded, plus about 15,000
credits) and you'd still only have 15 defence posts and a tech 1 starbase.[9]
Alternatively, fill the Falcon with
175 colonists 65 supplies 850 credits
to build 15 defence posts and 50 factories. The extra colonists can be used to
tax natives or colonise a second planet. Next turn build more factories and
mines on the first planet. Use supplies from the first planet to expand the
economy on the second planet rapidly.[11]
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<====== 7.16 Super Spy bug in host.exe ==================================>
<============================================================================>
In the older Hosts there used to be a Super Spy bug. Super Spy is cumulative,
and it takes 5 ships to garantee the planetary FC change. Nevertheless, it
was sufficient to have only one ship on Super Spy, and 4 just Cloaking.
Reply from Tim Wisseman (cocomax@aol.com):
| It was fixed in 3.22.010, the ships must have their mission set to "9"
| (Super Spy)
|
| Tim
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