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Sector 4: Ix - Loki Ix: 5:51 - (T) 7:42 - Ix is a deceptively simple level, once you realize that a bomber can easily empty out the upper craters without requiring additional fire power. Despite Thotimx doing an almost complete coverage of the map, our times were pretty much the same. I think he would have actually beat me if he had gone straight for the win. I like the style points of the near-perfect grid, though. Sculpter: 11:03 - (T) 16:26 - Capping the bottom emitter asap is essential, as it allows for network growth on both the upper and lower layers. Nodes build faster than relays, so constructing a node link gets a blaster in range faster. The two eastern emitters can both be capped safely from the high ground, which allows for growth in the entire eastern half of the map. From there, push back to the west emitters, and that's that. Volan: 12:09 - (T) 35:26 - First thing built should be a blaster to the lower right of the city. This stems the flow of creeper in the valley, and eventually allows for early capping of the lower left emitter once another blaster or a mortar is built to support it. Mortar bombing runs (or drone bombing runs) will keep the creeper from the left side of the map thin, allowing for fast cleanup once the network is developed. Again, the time comparisons can be made, and Thotimx went with making the world green before finishing. Pyxis: 6:00 - (T) 22:41 - Build two lines of collectors to grab the upgrades, and a THIRD line straight up the middle, splitting into two lines at the top. These two lines support a pair of mortars, and a blaster on the thin ledge outside of the creeper containment wall. With these defenses, the containment wall will not fail, period. A slight push with a few more blasters to the totems, and this penultimate level is beaten in under 10 minutes. Loki: 15:43 - (T) 23:35 - A single blaster, built directly beside Odin City (as far as possible while still being connected to the city), can hold off the creeper in the split almost indefinitely. Two chains of collectors to the north and south, to pic up the collectables, and then wrap back around along the wall, will comprise the inner-wall network. A pair of mortars placed half way along each wall provides enough fire to prevent the creeper from coming over the wall long enough to allow the schematic to appear. The real hard part of the level is getting said schematic. As Thotimx found out, you require at least 3 blasters to hold off the creeper enough to get a node built to connect the schematic. All that is left is to build the Thor, and you win. Loki (Thorless): 35:46 - It is possible to beat the level without building the Thor. All it really takes is more time, and A LOT of Reactors. I think I had like 40 of the things by the time I was done. Drones are also required to thin out the creeper before moving the wave of blasters up. As a side note, the spam of spores that happens is triggered by the presence of the Thor, so going Thorless doesn't have to deal with any spores. Also, to answer someone's question, you have to collect both the artifact and the schematic before the level is beaten. You get the usual "Collect all artifacts and schematics" message if you connect the totems without collecting them. There is a difference if you beat the level without the Thor, though I'll let Thotimx show it off if he can. I enjoyed the last set of levels, though I was disappointed at the difficulty drop off after Tucana and Pavo. Thankfully, some of the Special Ops levels provide a satisfying blend of difficulty and uniqueness. The story, as many others have noted, is not the strong suit of the game, however I feel the gameplay easily makes up for it. I'm looking forward to Thotimx's runs of the Conquest and Special Ops levels, though personally, I would recommend only documenting the Special Ops levels, and maybe any of the Conquest levels you find unique or enjoyable. A few of the Conquest levels to me where just, too bland and uninteresting.
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Jan 30, 2018 00:22
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InwardChaos posted:Loki (Thorless): 35:46 - It is possible to beat the level without building the Thor. All it really takes is more time, and A LOT of Reactors. I think I had like 40 of the things by the time I was done. Drones are also required to thin out the creeper before moving the wave of blasters up. As a side note, the spam of spores that happens is triggered by the presence of the Thor, so going Thorless doesn't have to deal with any spores. I just got around to trying this, but you beat me to it. I could have saved quite a lot of time if I had known that you have to actually collect the artifact and the Thor, instead of carefully building around them, grumble grumble. It's also worth mentioning that the Creeper Nexus is just an obstruction, it doesn't actually do anything.
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Jan 30, 2018 02:31
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 Holy poo poo I never knew that was even possible. I figured emitters that strong couldn't be capped off, but it's actually really easy.
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Jan 30, 2018 03:49
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Olesh posted:I just got around to trying this, but you beat me to it. If some video on Youtube from someone else is to be believed, you can actually build right on top of the Nexus. It's just a static image, nothing more. Also, it's the original emitter graphic, but made larger. A bit weird that they didn't change that one for the Anniversary Edition.
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Jan 30, 2018 07:46
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It's just so pleasing after so long having to deal with a swimming pool of creeper, but then having it evaporate away with Thor.  I think I could've dealt with the creeper as just being literally something that just exists to wipe out humanity's eternal struggle for answers in the empty void of space. Eh, I guess advanced aliens turning themselves into advanced goo is alright too. I'm quite curious to know how the sequels jumped off with that plot point, supposedly if they were much more refined.
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Jan 30, 2018 08:22
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Inward Chaos posted:There is a difference if you beat the level without the Thor, though I'll let Thotimx show it off if he can. Have at it if you or anyone else wants to. I don't intend to re-do any levels in this personally, there's enough content as it is.
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Jan 30, 2018 14:01
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Olesh posted:in the video, Thotimx, you consistently launched your drones in the corners and edges of the map, but it looked like the drones simply won't bomb as effectively that way - they do straight line bombing runs of three bombs normally, but most of the time your drones flew off the map and didn't drop the third bomb on the run, and then skipped the first bomb on the return trip. mumblegrumblecrumble ... OUTSTANDING! Deadmeat5150 posted:I never could beat that last planet. Glad to see you do it. Thanks! hey girl you up posted:s a cool game, a neat LP, and while I was wondering why you were down on the almost nonexistent story early on, I can't say I blame you now. (I was expecting a stable time loop, tbh.) It was more just from even the opening cinematic it just seems like a cool gameplay concept with a story haphazardly tacked on to it. You don't get invested in any characters(personal stories, such as they are, don't even come in until halfway through) so my reaction was just more of why bother with the story at all. I think the game could have done fine without it, it's really more that than thinking the story is terrible -- it's not really, just not enough of it there to make it worth having IMO. EagerSleeper posted:so pleasing after so long having to deal with a swimming pool of creeper, but then having it evaporate away with Thor Indeed. On the subject of the sequels, I've noticed more and more stuff coming out from the dev about 4. Looks like that'll probably be done well before I get to it. I'd like to keep the thread free of discussions of it as much as possible; go ahead and link the newer videos if you want, but I'm avoiding them as there is a LOT of gameplay between now and then to go through. On 2, clearly it has a fan in Carbon dioxide at least and lots of positive stuff about 3 is encouraging. My exposure to both them is seeing small parts of one level each on youtube LPs. I'm going to keep it at that. For 2, what I've heard/read is that the story's better and the gameplay's different/not as good as 1. I'm sure opinions will vary when we get there.
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Jan 30, 2018 21:30
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On the subject of the bonus material for Creeper World 1. I generally agree with Inward Chaos's point about the Conquest missions. I'm about halfway through the bonus stuff and I would say that in general, Conquest tends to be average to above-average difficulty(compared to the Story stuff); some of them are a bit challenging/grindy but some are quite routine. I don't think it's worth going through every.single.one. in the detail I've been doing. Here's the Conquest screen before doing anything with it: A Pentagon of pentagons here; five sets of five planets. Each sub-pentagon must be completed before attempting the connecting Special Ops missions.  Here's how that looks after having completed the first pentagon, the Grim Conquest missions. The first two here are unlocked. I think all of the Special Ops stuff, at least the ones I've seen so far, are interesting and/or challenging enough to be worth giving the full treatment. For the Conquest ones, I'll just upload the video and a couple screenshots for each(one for the start, and one later on to show the general approach taken). If I did one Conquest each day even, it would be longer than the Story and that seems overkill. So I'm going to plan on doing as follows: ** First 3 Conquest levels in one update ** Last 2 Conquest levels next ** First Special Ops ** Second Special Ops That cycle will repeat five times. It'll still take just as long as the Story Mode, covering a total of 35 missions. When I get to the last set(Gudrun Conquest and the final two Special Ops ones) I'll put up a vote to see if we're all sick of Creeper World 1 or if there are user-made or chronological maps people want me to try.
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Jan 30, 2018 21:44
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Faylone posted:Colonial Space maps 76 and 146 are what you're looking for. There's others that have been done in the same style since but they're REALLY not as interesting map designs.
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Jan 30, 2018 21:59
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I'll just leave these here.Olesh posted:the Creeper Nexus is an obstruction  "I'll build a giant fuckoff relay right in the middle of the Creeper Nexus and I'll make the Loki power it!" Yes you can technically build on the emitters as well, but the objects will be destroyed almost instantly by the creeper pulse.  You know what, game, I might actually do that. (BTW, after that screen the black hole blows up normally and everything continues unchanged from the normal ending) Git gud, InwardChaos, you slowpoke  I could trim lots of time here, too....nah, I have a better idea.  Pierzak fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jan 30, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 22:44
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Sector 4: Ix - Loki Ix: 5:22 - (G1)6:54 - (I)5:51 - (T) 7:42 - Build two tendrils, north and west. Grab the nanos and the schematics. Build a single drone at first and aim at the totem between the craters. It won't be enough, so you'll need some blasters to catch the spillover. Build a second drone when you can so you can target each crater individually and charge in with collectors while moving up your blasters. Sculpter: 8:12 - (G1) 11:50 - (I)11:03 - (T) 16:26 - Build south and east. Cap the southern emitter ASAP. Get a mortar to cover the two pools on the east, all the time building out your collector network. Then spam blasters and conquer the four pools. I capped the two east ones and only pushed back the creeper far enough to reach the totem for the two on the west. Volan: 15:18 - (G1)22:16 - (I)12:09 - (T) 35:26 - I think I attacked the SW pool too quickly and too much of my income was devoted to powering that one blaster that ultimately didn't do anything useful until I added a second one to back it up. Other than that, it was expand, build a mortar in the south to cover the SE and spam blasters and collectors while marching east. Pyxis: 3:45 - (G1)7:18 - (I)6:00 - (T) 22:41 - Pretty much IC's strategy. Three tendrils. Two grab the upgrades and stop expanding. One goes north and splits. Two mortars are enough to contain the central creeper. One blaster each is enough to push back the two side creepers to reach the totems. Loki: 13:31 - (I)15:43 - (T) 23:35 - I built two tendrils north and south, then ended up having to build the blaster next to Odin city instead of in the gap. After that, it's a straight shot. Two mortars can hold off the creeper from getting over the wall (although I think I build three). Three blasters and a mortar behind the wall are enough to open up a gap in the creeper for a single collector to grab the Thor schematic. After that, it's a walk in the park Loki (Thorless): 29:05 - (I)35:46 - I had no idea you could do this, and never really tried. I grabbed the artifact while building up my base and the schematics while pushing out. I wish I got some screenshots of what my map looked like, but too bad. Once I got the collectors set up in the safe valley, I build up a lot of reactors in the south and a pair of drones in the north. A single collector on the safe side of the wall can power four blasters on the other side of the wall. Four blasters is enough to make a noticeable gap in the creeper. I hooked up another blaster or two to a second collector and that was enough to break out and start building on the other side of the wall. Along the way, added two more drones, and then two more again later, bringing me up to six. I had four of them attack the four corners of the hill to bomb where the creeper was the deepest, on attacked the summit, and one attacked the side from which I was attacking. From there, it's a simple uphill climb, except that you need a bunch of blasters. Sure enough, the nexus is just a static image on the map, and doesn't do anything. You can safely build on top of it once you clear out the creeper. Once you have the summit, downhill battles are easy and it's a cinch to cap the remaining emitters and connect the totems. You get a special bit of dialogue.   InwardChaos posted:Thotimx's runs of the Conquest and Special Ops levels, though personally, I would recommend only documenting the Special Ops levels, and maybe any of the Conquest levels you find unique or enjoyable. A few of the Conquest levels to me where just, too bland and uninteresting. Seconding this. Conquest levels are pretty much like the chronometer levels. Randomly generated and pretty boring, but the Special Ops that they unlock are great (and sometimes evil). Edit: and in the time it took me to put this post together (and finish replaying the levels I hadn't played), this point became moot. General Revil fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jan 30, 2018 |
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Jan 30, 2018 23:34
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Pierzak posted:I'll just leave these here. That's ... a lot of reactors. Color me impressed.
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Jan 31, 2018 23:00
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Double down mode is !!fun!!. I almost felt like playing for the first time and hanging in by a thread. Easier than I thought though. Doesn't really make a difference in tactics except the first frantic "optimize the gently caress of build sequence to make the first mortar/blaster and not have Odin flooded" in a few missions. But at least it gives motivation to focus on the totems and not just lazily cover the whole map in collectors. I'll have to find the most assholish special ops maps and do that. DD-Loki 12:25 are you guys even trying anymore? 
Pierzak fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 01:55
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Grim Conquest, 1-3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_VgEJ9eq9I  There's spores to deal with at the first planet, but we start on high ground with some medium-to-low spots for the creeper to flow to, and there are a few upgrades.  Mortar bombing runs to the west end of the map ensure creeper levels stay under control. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKS5xlxOY_c  No aerial threats, but only one upgrade. The main thing here is that we start on low ground.  After relocating Odin City to higher ground, the early fighting centered around clearing the large western plateau with a blaster push. Once that was done, mortars could pound the northwest basin easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z84qgBvAN_E  Five upgrades available, and a sizable pool in the north-northeast to trap the enemy in.  This proves the easiest so far, as we're ready to pound that pool within a few minutes. A quick romp that is over in less than ten minutes.
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Feb 1, 2018 02:10
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These look borderline proc gen, like the bonus missions on CW3.
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Feb 1, 2018 05:37
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DoubleCakes posted:These look borderline proc gen, like the bonus missions on CW3. I'm pretty sure they are, just like the chronometer missions, but they were selected as some of the better ones.
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Feb 1, 2018 18:55
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Grim Conquest, 4-5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2dbf3fYlRg  Odin City's on the best high ground available, a full set of upgrades, and lots of low areas. This profiles as another cakewalk.  The spores complicate things a bit, but after using relays to cross a small gap, this mortar is set up to be able to bombard two low areas(including the small one to it's south). That's pretty much the start of pushing the enemy back. Victory comes in 12 minutes here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd-vfEiHT1s  This one's a little different. We start off on lower ground and only have half of the upgrades available. There's also limited territory that the creeper can't cover fairly quickly. Not overly difficult, but a little more challengeing than the last few.  Once again mortars play a key part. The one in the west keeps the Creeper from ascending the plateau -- relocating here at the start is well worth it IMO -- and the other keeps hammering away the the large basin to the south. Later on a number of blasters are employed to fight our way across it. A similar time here, a little over 11 minutes. That was pretty simple, all things considered. Next up, Special Ops has a stiffer challenge in store.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:59
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Thotimx posted:Next up, Special Ops has a stiffer challenge in store.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:07
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Let's see just how much 'fun' this really is ... Special Ops: Classic Earth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL2zEUzAJZU&feature=youtu.be  Doom Timer: 8:15 There is some time here. Not a ton, but some. The main problem is not getting over-run immediately, but rather carving out enough room to get a decent network and economy going. Overall the terrain's pretty rough, and while the Rockies/Andes mountain ranges are a good defensive barrier, that works both ways. There are also no upgrades available here, which doesn't help matters.  This is about the extent of what I'm able to do initially. Two energy/second isn't much. I would term the primary challenge of this map to be figuring out a way to defend and take out the two 'American' emitters with a limited starting area like this.  The Rockies do provide a spot to build on, which makes the North American Emitter an obvious target. So far things are going well, and I'm thinking this is going to be pretty easy. It is, after all, the first SpecOps mission. I've got a few blasters, a few speed enhancers up, and a bit more territory now to expand the network.  I decide to go visit South America before even finishing the new collectors. Soon enough I've got that emitter capped as well. However, I run out of ammunition long before I can support them, and have to retreat. I wasn't really ready. I next try to build a collector in the Gulf of Mexico to support a new attack, but I can't really find a good place to connect it. I retreat again. Then I try to move into the North Atlantic Basin -- and get a blaster destroyed, as I'm not really ready for that either.  Then I try this, building a relay in South America. But I don't have nearly enough time before the blaster there runs out of ammunition. The next time, I send over a second blaster to support. Just as it's about to land, the first blaster runs out again ... the half-built relay is destroyed ... and once more I am foiled. This kind of thing repeats itself for a while as I almost, but not quite, get a permanent foothold in that hemisphere. I build more blasters to rotate more in there, but am not fast enough with moving them, or with placing the relay, or I try to bring them in from too far away ... something always seems to be amiss with my attempts. I can't just throw a bunch of them on there because they will fire at the creeper at the ocean as well, so they will still run out of ammo without support.  I'm still futzing about with this when the level of creeper in the ocean grows deep enough for it it overflow past Cape Horn, taking out a collector and forcing me to allocate a blaster to keep it at bay. I respond by building a mortar to send on bombing runs to Asia.  From here I can blast both the Indian and Pacific Oceans ... barely. Just enough range to accomplish that. Of course, this doesn't solve the main problem, it just helps me keep things as they are. Shortly afterwards I once again almost get the relay up and protected -- but not quite, waiting too long for reinforcement blasters. Argh!  It ultimately takes almost 17 minutes for me to get the 'not-THAT-complicated' maneuver correct: a couple blasters in at first, then the relay, then constantly rotating blasters out quickly. This doesn't gain that much territory. What it does do is knock out one of the two remaining operational emitters, which means even a minimal amount of firepower should be sufficient to take on the final one. The new continent allowed a few more collectors, ultimately boosting the energy intake from 2.7 to 3.1. Not a huge bump, but I'll take it.  First the Atlantic was taken over by blasters and collectors, and then we started moving into Africa and Europe. An incorrectly-moved blaster doomed another one and the first attempt at doing that failed, but at this point it was just a matter of time and advancing in a reasonable manner. One emitter, even a fairly strong one, wasn't going to hold us off.  More 'two steps forward, one step back' action ensued, but eventually we conquered the Asian Emitter. Now it was just a matter of wearing down the creeper so we could get to that final Totem in Australia. Including screwing up one more time and letting that emitter lose for a bit. After just a few more minutes of waiting for a trail of collectors to get built, we had won.  South America proved the most difficult part of this, and I made it substantially more complicated than it needed to be. An interesting level though, and it does provide a challenge with the amount of energy-pressure at the beginning.
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Feb 3, 2018 05:55
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Good job on that. Now we get to see how you deal with the tax man.
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Feb 3, 2018 08:09
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Try putting blasters in "less-optimal" positions, away from coasts. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, it makes them focus fire on the important targets (like an emitter) only, instead of wasting ammo on random creeper oceans that will be better cleared with a mortar anyway. Same goes for defending any tight spaces, like mid-Atlantic in this scenario. ed: also why is it called the tax man
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Feb 3, 2018 15:51
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I would also suggest building relays far more often. They take fewer packets to build than collectors and have a longer range. Building those instead means you can get ammo to your blasters faster and have more room to place the blasters and eventual collectors. It would have helped your first couple of attempts to take Asia/Africa from the Atlantic if you had use relays instead for that initial push.
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Feb 3, 2018 15:58
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Pierzak posted:Try putting blasters in "less-optimal" positions, away from coasts. I do that sometimes -- I didn't see any real opportunities for it in this mission. I have no clue about the tax-man thing, that beats me. Slaan posted:I would also suggest building relays far more often. They take fewer packets to build than collectors and have a longer range. The reason I don't do this is they only have longer range to other relays. As far as speed goes, with enough speed buildings up the difference is negligible.
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Feb 3, 2018 17:32
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Right. The point is that you can build a relay in the safe spot then a relay in your offensive location to connect to, which your blasters can then be reinforced off of. ~4 less packets would have kept your blasters in ammo on some of those offensives where the collectors didn't get build fast enough and you had to pull back from lack of ammunition.
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Feb 3, 2018 18:30
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Special Ops: Super Tax-Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TOAAA6XWZQ&feature=youtu.be  Super Tax-Man is otherwhise known as 'North Carolina'. Only a single emitter here, but as we will see it's a very powerful one. The lower plain where the Totems are will flood quickly, but it's size gives us some respite on the high ground. Doom Timer: 19:34 In a lot of ways this is similar to the just-finished Classic Earth mission. No imminent danger of destruction, but establishing a sizable network will not be a simple matter.  40 seconds later the sixth collector is about to come online, basically exhausting the easily available territory. You can see how fast that emitter is pulsing, having already flooded better than half of the map. Already we are going to have to fight to gain more territory. Even so, I still had no real clue what I was in for here.  A couple blasters are sufficient to expand at first ... slowly. Similar to the point made by Pierzak, it's essential to keep them shooting only at what's on the central part of the state here -- I had one of them further south but it was blowing ammunition on the surrounding plain. There isn't enough to spare on that.  Slowly, painstakingly, I carve out about half of the middle section here and place three more collectors. However, I soon discover that time is quite against us. As the plain fills up, the volume of creeper that flows that way is lessened ... and more of it comes towards me. The blasters can barely keep up, and I don't have the energy to build more. We've stalled, and in the long run the creeper is going to win if this continues.  I'm forced to surrender my position in the middle -- though it would have been better to save the blasters. A few more collectors are added to harvest every last pixel of fractal energy from the one secure area I do have, and a mortar built to pound the depths some.  I fire it some from the north coast, then move it to the south, but soon realize it wasn't the most brilliant plan ever conceived. I just don't have enough territory to get it into position to hurt the creeper much. Let's build a drone base instead, so I can target where I want. This is just over eight minutes, and already the Creeper totally dominates the map. That emitter is no joke.  I build more of them, and a couple storage units to buffer resupply 'funds' so I can rearm them quicker when they return to base. This isn't going to help me expand I don't think, but the idea here was to at least try to kill as much Creeper as the emitter is producing while I try to figure out a plan for eventually fighting back. At least this way I can target the greatest concentrations for maximum impact. I built a couple blasters and tried another push, but this failed woefully and predictably. I just didn't have enough energy to support them at the necessary level. There wasn't much room left, particularly the way I have things arranged, but I did finally start to address the real problem(lack of energy) and got a reactor building.  Just one reactor increased the income from 1.4 to 1.7, more than a 20% reduction in the inadequacy of the economy. I also started bombing the emitter itself. That's normally not a great idea when it's elevated, but with the amount this thing puts out and it being stacked up against a ridge like it is here, it's actually pretty effective here -- there's always significant depth within seconds of a pass. This was the best we'd looked in about ten minutes.  It probably would have worked too, if I hadn't gotten too greedy and built a couple reactors simultaneously on the lower ground. Wasn't long before the ammunition slowdown to the blasters made me lose it all. The next push mostly failed as well, but I did manage to hang on to a collector and a blaster in the middle section -- and get a second reactor up and going. 2.1 energy now. Progress.  Started up a third, but it was a bit risky. If that blaster gets overwhelmed, it now has nowhere safe to return to. It'll be hung out to dry -- err, the opposite of dry actually in this case. I'm hoping it can survive and I can then have enough energy for a more substantive push to gain more territory. I found that as long as regular bombing runs were made on the emitter, the blaster could hold off the rest of the creeper by itself. A corner was finally being turned, almost 20 minutes into the struggle.  As we crept to the east, more collectors and reactors were built, and eventually we got over the energy hump. The three drones were flying out regularly and the creeper no longer gathered to dangerous depths. The situation was under control. It was time to bring the mortar forward and reactivate it. I wanted to go for the jugular, and take that super-emitter out of commission.  It didn't take long to accomplish that, and now there was plenty more territory available. The Creeper should melt before me at this point.  Then I pulled this brilliant manuever, pulling all three blasters away to start clearing out the plain. Because brain fart. All the lower area and most of the middle were lost before I could equalize the situation. It took about three minutes to recap the emitter. No problem, I got this now. I'll just leave one blaster in place to keep things under wraps, and ...  Oh. GOODY. The emitter escapes again, as one blaster isn't enough with this beast. This wasn't as catastrophic at least, because the thing wasn't pulsing unimpeded.  Leaving two to guard it did prove enough, and more blasters were sent out to carve paths to the Totems. Finally this struggle was about to end.  A worthy opponent passeth. That's the longest, at least so far, that it's taken me on any level by a goodly margin.
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Feb 3, 2018 20:39
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My guess is that Virgil Wall lives in NC and he's complaining about state income taxes, or there's an IRS office in Raleigh, NC. I think I tried to place as many reactors as I could to beat that level, ignoring storage techs completely.
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Feb 3, 2018 21:14
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Well he's right that the mountains of NC are far above the other regions in quality, and the surrounding states are gross cesspools of terrible
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Feb 3, 2018 21:59
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Slaan posted:ou can build a relay in the safe spot then a relay in your offensive location to connect to, which your blasters can then be reinforced off of. Gotcha, I think I understand now, thanks. I still don't think it's worth doing in some cases but for getting a foothold like in the Africa situation I can see how that would have been better. I'll try to watch out for this in the few missions that are left.
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Feb 4, 2018 23:22
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Skuld 1-3 https://youtu.be/wpZJPxanBsk  Good mix of high and low ground, defensible location for the city, good amount of upgrades to deal with -- no real problems here.  An early mortar is built to spend some time hammering the right-side pool, then blasters push back on the largest plateau here. A little over 15 minutes for this mission. https://youtu.be/KV9Z7Fjegxs  This is just a little more hairy, with spores as a threat, no good high-ground location for the city, and a lot of the usable land is of medium elevation.  The deep pool in the east is a big creeper weakness if you move quickly though. Here a first mortar is set up to make it a permanent one, with another one coming in the north. Only about eight and a half minutes here, did pretty well time-wise. https://youtu.be/Mnwr7QRi0_U  No upgrades, but also no spores to deal with, and a sizable plateau to start out with. Looks like a yawner.  Here a blaster push is well underway on the west side. Took my sweet time to finish this in 13-14 minutes.
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Feb 4, 2018 23:55
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Tax-Man (and Earth to an extent), show off the power of utilizing Reactors in small spaces. Trying to rely on just the energy of Collectors only will lead to energy starvation in most circumstances. Drones are also preferred in small spaces due to their global attack range. It's a nice surprise when you find out that the Tax-Man emitter requires at least 3 blasters on it to keep it capped.
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Feb 5, 2018 01:00
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With the earth mission, it seems you could have put a relay on that high point next to the south american emitter, connecting it to another relay on the safe side of the mountains. Then there wouldn't have been any trouble with dropping in blasters and trying to resupply them, because they'd already have a connection.
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Feb 5, 2018 02:52
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I have to ask, do you just hate reactors or something? A lot of your explanations boiled down to "Early economy sucks due to lack of land, so you just have to stick it out." When it should be "You don't have much land, so take what you can, get a single turret up to keep the creeper away, and fill in the area you do have with reactors before you push." On Super Tax Man, when you finally built a reactor, and it put your economy up by 0.2 I was wondering if maybe you stopped hating the things, but then the next few videos showed you ignore them again. Reactors are expensive to build, but once you get the first one down, it pays for itself in seconds and then can be used to build more. By the time you get the things, you should really only use a few collectors to get your economy started, and then just build relays to your weapons. Then back-fill the area with collectors, because hey, easy energy once you have a sector cleaned up. Ahh well, you aren't going for "Super efficient" runs anyways, and you do win. It is just, every time I see you run out of energy, despite having plenty of open areas, I kinda 
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Feb 5, 2018 05:55
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Zebrin posted:I have to ask, do you just hate reactors or something? Pretty much. I use them when I have to, and more or less only then. Talked about it a bit before when they were discovered, but while I realize that they do add another strategical element to the game I think they interrupt the whole 'battle for territory' dynamic. I'm aware I'm playing not optimally in many cases, but I build them when they can't be avoided only for the most part. I'm definitely biased towards the 'extend-the-network' rather than the 'compact energy-producing' mindset.
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Feb 5, 2018 06:12
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From playing a bunch of CW3 that really is kind of the only challenge is the thing. Reactors make it extremely easy to turn a stalemate into a landslide. All you really have to do is find a way to survive the initial wave long enough to build your economy up so that you produce enough energy to out-damage the creeper. Honestly I suspect the game might be better without reactors, or at least a bit more challenging. Using reactors means you don't even really need to think about how to advance, cos you're more than capable of just brute forcing your way through anything with sheer firepower. I imagine if you're playing for time the point is to do it as quickly as possible but in terms of just winning the game's not very strategically challenging past the first five minutes. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Feb 5, 2018 |
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Feb 5, 2018 06:16
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carbon dioxide posted:They are a relatively large initial investment and for a fair comparison, the real value you should be working with is the time it costs when they've generated enough energy to pay back their own construction. Reactors cost 40 energy units, and they generate 0.3 energy units per second. That means it takes 40 / 0.3 = 133 seconds of being in operation before they start giving a net profit. For comparison, some internet source said that a collector that can reach its full area all by itself generates about 0.18 units per second, so there it only takes 10 / 0.18 = 55 seconds of being in operation before it pays itself back. Just wanted to bring this back up as I think it's quite relevant vis a vis the Reactors discussion. Taking over two minutes instead of just seconds to pay for themselves is a significant thing.
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Feb 5, 2018 06:27
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I'm mostly just baffled by your use of speed nodes. Occasionally they're fine, but often you put three off in a corner or in an otherwise bad position where they're never going to be part of the shortest path to your firing squads.
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Feb 5, 2018 06:48
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Those red diamond-shaped speed boosters raise the speed of all packets on the network. They don't have to be in the path of travel. Relays (the triangular things) double the speed of packets traveling between two relays. They do have to be in the path of travel.
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Feb 5, 2018 07:07
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Mzbundifund posted:Relays (the triangular things) double the speed of packets traveling between two relays. They do have to be in the path of travel. That's only in CW3. Here, they move packets the same speed as collectors, but can be more efficient depending on your collector setup.
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Feb 5, 2018 09:39
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Thotimx posted:Just wanted to bring this back up as I think it's quite relevant vis a vis the Reactors discussion. Taking over two minutes instead of just seconds to pay for themselves is a significant thing. "just seconds" seems a little disingenous here. Reactor: 133 seconds to pay for itself. 0.3 energy. Collector: 55 seconds to pay for itself (if able to utilize the maximum area). 0.004 energy/square, for a max of 0.18 energy. Area is a 7x7 square minus the corners (45 squares). BUT. Collectors can't be placed far enough apart to utilize the maximum area. Unless you're placing every new collector off a relay to ensure the minimum overlap, you're only getting 0.14 energy at best (expanding in a straight line at maximum distance), and frequently you will be getting less. 10 energy / 0.14 = 71.4 seconds to pay for itself. Adding in a second line of collectors adjacent to the first, even at maximum distance, is still less efficient than the first line, as you have more mandatory overlap and thus smaller possible coverage. Collectors are incredibly important in the early game, when larger swathes of territory are available, the payoffs are bigger, and the immediate impact to the economy is important to claim enough territory to be able to defend key locations. They're faster to build and faster to start showing a profit. However, once you've hoovered up all of the available big gains, plugging small holes with collectors is a bad economic move. As long as you have the biggest available spaces already covered and don't need to immediately dedicate resources to building blasters or mortars to stop the creeper, you should probably be building reactors for energy instead of trying to patch coverage. Edit: Any collector that is using 40% or more of its area is still better than a reactor in terms of credits spent per energy gained. Olesh fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Feb 5, 2018 |
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Feb 5, 2018 10:55
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Olesh posted:"just seconds" seems a little disingenous here. I was referring to this: Zebrin posted:Reactors are expensive to build, but once you get the first one down, it pays for itself in seconds and just pointing out that it takes longer than that.
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Feb 5, 2018 16:15
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