How do all of these different single player options work?

[blakrat]

Greetings all - Having missed out on the evolution of this great `Classic' game - I am bewildered by the options now available in `instant' mode. What the heck is a Thug recycler? - It looks magnificent and the individuals that have contributed to this upgrade have done a great job but without instructions or at least a guide its almost unfathomable.

Regards,

G.

[S.cavA.rmyG.en]

well theres a main commander for each team a Thug is every one els on the team. and the thug recycler lets you build basic recylers for your thugs.

[Red Spot]

Just host a 'MultiPlayer' (MP) game and look at the info screen from there.
http://members.ziggo.nl/red_spot/BZ2-Recylist.JPG

[Axeminister]

Thug Recycler is one thing, you don't need instructions really, just build the items and use them. For me though the most fun is had by using the Greenheart Recycler. It can be used on any mpi map, but to use it on one of the Greenheart maps creates a lot of fun. More ships, defenses, constructors with new objects to build. This recycler together with Wugs aips make for some very tough games.

[Feared_1]

The best way to learn something is to try it out and experience it for yourself.

[Ded10c]

Be extremely careful using the Thug Recycler as a number of players have been known to use it for griefing (building a constructor of their own and demolishing your base with it).

[Feldheld]

I always use the Commando C variant. Only standard weapons, a couple of improved units, greatly improved gun towers, and smart healers. Provides a nice challenge when playing against insane level AI.

Never tried the thug recycler. Do thugs gather their own biometal? Or do they build their stuff all from the commanders biometal reserve?

[Zero Angel]

Thugs don't use the same scrap system as the commander -- they build silos to increase scrap storage and hover scavs to collect loose scrap. Thug recs are not to my taste given the amount of time and effort it takes to generate enough scrap to be able to build even low cost ships.

[Red Spot]

Never tried the thug recycler. Do thugs gather their own biometal? Or do they build their stuff all from the commanders biometal reserve?

As ZA already mentioned, they use silo's. However their scrap generation works pretty much opposite than normal. Their recy is the base of the scrapgauge and does not generate scrap on its own. The silo's are on top of the gauge and automaticly increase scrap. In effect you just need to fill up the recy with scrap and let it generate scrap on its own from there.
It will not be very practicle to build a big army of your own with the thug-recy but its nice you can build your own replacement ships/pods/etc.
You can speed up the collection proces with hoverscavs, but I found it pretty impractical to use those.

[MrTwosheds]

The thug recy is a fun idea, but in practice all it really does is slow down the teams advancement. Its best if the commander stops collecting loose scrap after a thug recy is deployed, or the thugs will find themselves competing with the commander for that scrap. And of course while the thugs are building their base, they are not doing the real thugs job of blowing stuff up.
Main recy +1 thug recy can work with 4 players, 3 thug recys will just mean you have 3 thugs struggling to get enough scrap to build anything.

[Red Spot]

That very much depends 2Sheds. As I already mentioned, if you get your base up (and your comm can support you here with scrap-transports) and than just use it as a means to build your own replacement ships it works quite nicelly. Its just that most who get a thug-recy seem to believe its Sim-city and they need to build their own capitol, which means that as a comm it isnt very usefull to give those thugs their own recy.

[Zero Angel]

The thug recy is a fun idea, but in practice all it really does is slow down the teams advancement. Its best if the commander stops collecting loose scrap after a thug recy is deployed, or the thugs will find themselves competing with the commander for that scrap. And of course while the thugs are building their base, they are not doing the real thugs job of blowing stuff up.
Main recy +1 thug recy can work with 4 players, 3 thug recys will just mean you have 3 thugs struggling to get enough scrap to build anything.

Exactly -- emphasis on 'competing with the commander for loose scrap'. The idea behind team games is that you work as a team and your efforts are those cumulative with your commander. On games where I've received a thug recy, it prevented me from fulfilling my commander's objectives because most of my effort was put towards improving and defending my own little base -- while realistically accomplishing little more than being a meatshield towards the endless stream of assault units that the AI team sends out.

Neither can you really provide forces to assist your commander's offensive push. He still gets a lions share of all field resources, and if he cannot -- then the whole team suffers since the commander is often the driving force behind any real offensive pushes. Sparing one or two of your assault units to join the attack does not yield any kind of net gain because the scrap that you used to collect those units with your hover scavs was scrap that your commander would have otherwise received from his own scavengers and possibly passed to you anyways.

[Nielk1]

The way that the thug rec works however does create some interesting possibilities.

[Axeminister]

Thugs nomally would get passed stuff. Too bad the function in the IA games was removed where the computor would build base and pass ships. This would allow the thugs to remain thugs but still have the possibility to combine ships their commander give along with their thug recyceler giving out stuff.
But really my experience with the thug recycler just gives everyone that joins a reason to not obey the commander. Then instead of being a combat commander, you become the douche that wants evreyone to wait to see if we can't kill the enemy without using the thug recycler once.

[Ded10c]

That reminds me. Why was this functionality removed and is there any way it could be replaced?