Fremen conquest mode and selling fuel cells?

[Stefan]

Is this a bug?

[dtt.scanner]

There was another thread about this. I was actually looking for it to respond to the complaint there. It is not a bug, it is simply not necessary for the Fremen for that mission. You can earn gold through other means (carefully and economically), but the one thing the other poster failed to mention was that it was a diplomatic (espionage) mission.

You do need to establish a base economy to work from, so things like the Investment Office and Freedom Fighters are important. Basically anything that can give you an economic boost from less obvious sources. There are plenty of "gold producing" specials on the map, and one thing that was overlooked by the complainers is that without spice, you can build the ceremonial caves for free. Since the map is geared toward Fuel Cell production, that means that there are a lot of energy nodes on the map where Ceremonial Caves can be built with zero upkeep cost for the Fremen. With a 5% offensive boost for all of your troops for each Cave, you can easily build a force that is strong enough to defend your holdings.

Since this is an espionage mission and not a military mission, your troops only need to be strong enough to hold a defensive position. Your main goal is not military or even fuel cells, but rather setting up and generating INTEL to complete the spy missions required to complete the scenario. Your research should be primarily in the statescraft (espionage) techs. Since this is the fifth map (at its earliest), you should already have perks and Fremen Unity that can give you benefits to help you in the scenario.

I would recommend Shimoom and Stilgar, to reveal sietches for their trade bonuses (one of them is straight up gold) and for the economy savings on global upkeep with water production 12+ (which you can get in territories with 5 wind, especially if you have the Recycling Vats in your Major Sietch. There were at least 2-3 of these within reach.) In most territories, if they have a gold bonus, you can go ahead and build 3-4 buildings with maintenence buildings in strategic places to keep the costs down. Also, even though there is no spice, you may want to unlock some of the CHOAM tech just to get the extra CHOAM slot for another +10 gold.

You only want to take territories with strategic value. If you are Fremen, you can benefit from Neutral territories as well as your own. Since you will be limited on gold, you may not want to build a lot of ornithopters. I think I only built 3, and I wish I could have uncovered resources fast enough to only do it with 1 or 2. You could probably cheat the map by uncovering everything with ornithopters, and then go back and play with only one uncovering the territories that you know you will want to take. That would give you the ability to get the recycling vats or administrative hall fairly quickly instead of buying ornithopters.

This scenario is a micromanager's field day. You have to tighten your belt and make tough decisions on your buildings in order to manage your economy and defense. Also, don't neglect diplomacy. You only need to assassinate one of the factions (Vernius). You can make trade alliances with the other two which can also help secure your borders and boost your economy. Or you can keep taking territories with just a defensive turret and militia, to keep other factions from taking them. You do get gold for liberating territories, so that is another path to take instead of or in addition to diplomacy. Just keep in mind that you need to set up your intel on an enemy border, so it's not a bad thing to have them on your border.

[Stefan]

Thank you for your detailed answer. I know there are other ways to win such a scenario, however the suggested way to make money is to sell fuel cells, which is not possible for the Fremen. It increases the difficulty significantly - in short, I don't think this is the intention.

Have a happy new year!

[dtt.scanner]

I agree. I think the intention is to exploit the Energy Nodes without having a cost associated with it, rather than gaining Solari from manufacturing Fuel Cells, as the other factions need to do. Gaining an advantage with zero cost is in some ways more valuable than making Solari. You do need to have a strong military in order to defend your assassination attempt, and the Fremen can recuit free mercenaries to aid in this as well. All in all it was an interesting scenario, especially because of the different tactic needed. It makes you have to think outside the box.

The reason I posted is that so many people are saying the game is broken, and that the Devs eff'd up, without even trying to figure out how to win it. The game is meant to be challenging, and scenarios like this are frequent to force you to not do the same thing every time.

[anoneko]

This is certainly a bug and no amout of letters in a response are going to justify that.

[Soho]

Originally posted by anoneko:

This is certainly a bug and no amout of letters in a response are going to justify that.

What makes you so certain?

I've also beat the mission as Fremen, it is not that difficult to figure out

The mission pool includes missions that go out to every faction, and this is one of them- even though Fremen have no way of making fuel cells. They have other ways obviously to run their economy, just as pretty much every other faction does

I don't think this "certainly" makes this a bug ... on the contrary, I think it is certainly functioning as designed