Part 34: Bonus Update - United Civilized States Details

Now that we've got the Plasma Cannon I thought it was a good time to show off more stuff from the Prima guide, this time focusing on the UCS.



As you can see the Plasma Cannon is the best weapon the UCS has by far. Furthermore, only the Eurasian Dynasty's Heavy Ion Cannon does more damage than the fully-upgraded Heavy Plasma Cannon. We'll be getting that soon, but even the regular Plasma Cannon is impressive. I'd say it's the best weapon in the game for engaging land units due to its hire rate of fire and absurd damage totals.



I'm not sure what the Orca is, but it's not in Earth 2150. The Orca appears in the sequel. It's a ballistic missile submarine and it makes naval research worth it.

According to this the Grizzly is an upgradable unit but since you can never build them or research them it's a bit pointless. I guess if you were making custom maps you could decide which version you wanted to put in. Another thing to note about the Grizzly is its high resistance to temperature damage (energy capacity). Before you get shields you can use the Grizzlies you recover to eat up laser damage.



The Tiger can't mount shields, which is why the Spider is a much better mid-game unit due to the Eurasian Dynasty throwing tons of laser and ion enemies at you.

We've got all the UCS structures so far except for the Plasma Control Center and Fortress. The Fortress is the best defensive structure in the game. It's got heavy armor (75% reduction against non-energy weapons), 1,000 hit points, and four weapon mounts (2 light and 2 light/heavy). Just one of these can stop an attack dead in its tracks. The Plasma Control Center is the UCS superweapon. It lets you shoot plasma anywhere on the map due to the power of



The Plasma Bomb is a new ammunition type. The ED and UCS can put bomb bays on their heavier airplane chassis (Bat, Dragon, Thor and Han). The bombs do a lot of damage but your plane must stop for a few seconds to drop its payload. Usually that exposes it to heavy fire, but it can be a good strategy to clear out a dug-in enemy.



It's a shame the ED and UCS can't upgrade their building units. I'd pay 5,000 CR so I could build my base faster.



The Shadow Generator allows you to fully cloak your units. You can use it to continue the cloak-and-dagger tactics from the beginning of the campaign into the late parts of the campaign when the enemy is more cognizant of your attacks. It's especially good in multi-player.



The second upgrade to the Heavy Plasma Cannon doesn't increase the damage. Instead it allows you to mount a second weapon like we've seen with the LC's Heavy Electro-Cannon and the UCS's standard rocket launcher.



The UCS campaign has, at maximum, 19 missions. We're currently on mission 12. Bet you didn't think we were already 2/3rds of the way through the UCS campaign did you? Of course we're not even halfway done with Project MARS. The final mining missions are going to be much more intense this time around for that reason.