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Skuld 4-5 https://youtu.be/mp4fEhodd6g This was actually my second run at this mission, as I didn't record the first effort which ended up being two minutes and change longer.  The pit in the northwest is the most significant feature of this map, and buys me some time.  A large network can be built before fighting much, and the closest emitter in each direction can be capped without much fighting to get to them. This is just over four minutes in; just over nine was the final time. https://youtu.be/ZOtP06E5QzY  This one's different at least. Spores are back, and it's an archipelago thing going on with a bunch of islands. Two of the totems are quite easy to claim since they are on high ground well away from the Creeper.  Moving Odin City to one of the islands, then using the three big ones as a base of operations gets things going. Then it's a matter of claiming this smaller eastern one, then the northeast corner where the final Totem is. That took longer than it needed to, but once again just over nine minutes was the time. An interesting mission I found, but not difficult.
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Feb 5, 2018 16:42
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Special Ops: Gump https://youtu.be/8LLHNlNDj9A  So here we need to defeat the emoticon, or what used be called a 'smiley-face'. Stuck on the low ground, with four emitters on the thing above us and some smallish craters to collect the enemy in. Space is not a problem here. Doom Timer: 2:58 Time is though. Unless we act, the entire map will be covered in Creeper inside of three minutes.  Up to this point(a hair over a minute in) it's pretty basic -- but now we've got to decided when and where to fight.  By the time I get going I'm already in trouble, but the creeper does start receding some once I start pounding the 'mouth' with a mortar. If I had this to do over again, I might observe -- based on the recent discussion in no small part -- that I need a few reactors to have enough energy. But you know I'm not going to do that.  For a while I seem to be doing ok-ish, getting a couple of collectors up on the top level to bring in a bit more energy. This is a mirage though; the volume of Creeper pressure on the plain is gradually increasing, and a regular income of 2/second with a deficit over 40 becomes more and more unsustainable.  Just over seven minutes in, the blockade along the east gives way. Some will probably find it humorous that now that it's clearly too late, I start building a reactor ...  Let's see if I can do any better the second time. https://youtu.be/VUv3_22r1D0  This time I go for an early drone base. I think the intention here was to more easily target the deepest crater available without the micro of turning a mortar on and off all the time. This was played a while ago during an uncontrolled CW binge shortly after I beat the Story mode.  We're already under pressure by the time the bomber is ready, and a slightly smaller network than last time.  After getting a couple blasters up, I start a second base while targeting the mouth emitter. As you may have noticed, my default 'I don't know what else to do' strategem is to build drones and buy time. It soon becomes clear that I've managed to achieve equilibrium, but it's still not going to be easy to expand this way.  Slowly at first, and then more steadily, I'm able to progress up the east side and occupy the territory underneath the mouth as well. The periodic bombing runs are enough to relieve the pressure so that the blasters can keep up. We were almost dead by this point in the first attempt, so this is definitely better.  I try moving a Blaster down to cap off the mouth emitter, but can't get it quite close enough safely, so that idea is soon abandoned. A more traditional push across the 'face' will have to suffice.  Marching straight west to the 'nose', I took out one emitter there and after that it was all clean-up. I'd like to say I had a good reason for not building any support structures this time, but I'm pretty sure there isn't one and that it just didn't occur to me.  This one just looks somebody threw up or was doing a bad Picasso imitation.
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Feb 6, 2018 23:13
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I keep forgetting about drones, preferring to stick to blasters and mortars. An obvious mistake since I had to do bombing runs on the eyes when I successfully beat it. It took me a few tries to pull it off and it was rough.
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Feb 7, 2018 00:26
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lol that level had an afro
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Feb 7, 2018 03:42
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Special Ops: Mouse Shadow https://youtu.be/yqYNa6WGPvo  Spores, a very small starting 'safe' area', and two fairly strong, false-pulsing emitters which occupy the only high ground. Oh yeah, and still no upgrades yet. This is another one that is not a push-over. Another obvious question is why we have two artifacts here when this isn't a story mission ... Doom Timer: 11:51 Imminent destruction isn't the issue so much as establishing a large enough presence to turn the tide on the Creeper here.  It takes very little time to cover the available area with collectors. Then the question of 'now what?' comes to mind.  In less than two minutes my initial plan starts taking shape. Relays to the west, where the hope is to establish more territory while not fighting the entire bulk of the enemy; there are lower elevations for it to flow down to. That's also the point of the drone base, dealing with pounding those locations.  Starts out ok here, but I forget about the spores until far too late. This one hits, taking out a collector and a relay and screwing up my connections. Both collectors in the western foothold are soon made casualties of this as well.  The next spore attack is defeated though, and I'm able to rebuild my position with interest. A second blaster is on the way and I'm feeling good about being able to gradually expand efforts.  A couple more collectors, but to go much further we need to assault the central plateau and I don't have the energy for that. In retrospect this is another siuation where reactors were the answer.  This happened after I tried to force the issue twice and got nowhere. Three spores came in, and the western SAM site took out two but had no missiles left. The last one landed directly on the middle relay, and once again the network crumbled.  After taking several minutes to re-establish basically the same position, creeper came up over the northern tip of our main holdings in the east. Once that was dealt with I got a reactor going, but still wasn't going anywhere. Partly because one of the blasters is regularly basically wasting energy firing at the lower basin here. Either way, at this point I would probably have needed a lot more reactors, but I got interrupted by some stupid RL thing that I can't even remember now and had to re-start. https://youtu.be/sGc_NYGzdW0 The start went similarly on the next try. Too similarly. I once again forgot to build SAMs until after the first spores hit and disconnected the network. One would think that red box with the timer ticking down at the bottom of the screen would be enough warning. But no.  14:44 on the video here. For anyone watching them this is a decent place to start as the start of it just is almost a carbon-copy of the first try. Quite similar to the first try, except I have a speed building up and two Reactors. A little more sensible, though not much different. I'm afraid there are also some rather obvious stuttering things going on in the video -- I would eventually figure out the hardware cause which I won't bore you with here. For now, it is what it is. But the general pattern I tried to follow was building a reactor when the drone took off, so it would be mostly done when it returned and started re-arming. That permitted enough ammunition to get to the blasters, and ever-so-slowly the energy situation improved. By the 15-minute mark on the mission timer, I could build a reactor before the drone returned from it's bombing run. Now with four of them operational and a 3.4 regular income, I was making sure if gradual progress.  After building another speed unit and a few more reactors, I finally made my move up, and it appeared successful. By this point I'd had quite enough of this mission and I wanted to be sure I was prepared before screwing things up again.  A steady advance soon capped the central emitter, and that was basically the end of any serious threat. But about those two artifacts ...  The first one(in the northeast) was reached after capping the second emitter, then getting my blasters blown up, then repeating the process. It appears we've reached the 'notes from the developer' stage.  This is a genuinely interesting tidbit IMO.  A very similar type of challenge here to the North Carolina map -- never really at risk of losing, but winning is not trivial.
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Feb 7, 2018 14:30
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Aaaah gently caress the DD Gump. I'm not used to early build order being so crucial.
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Feb 7, 2018 16:21
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Frigg 1-3 https://youtu.be/8UUjbLavY0Y  This appears to be all about taking that central plateau. If that can be achieved quickly, this should be a breeze.  Takes three minutes to have a sizable network and a mortar up and running, with more on the way. This was one of the fastest levels I've done, over in 7-plus. https://youtu.be/mYSE6_ff6Nk  The combination of a couple upgrades and generous Totem placement might make this one even easier.  One mortar is enough to keep things under control in the south while the network expands to the west. From there, grabbing that third totem in the south-west region will be quite routine. The time is nearly identical to the previous mission. https://youtu.be/ZbDEaDrTjJ0  There's more to this one, at least at first glance. No good high ground and Odin City looks like a relocation candidate. Emitters on a variety of elevations to start.  Those factors, in addition to the threat of Spores, allow the Creeper to slow us down much sooner. Having said that, I made a lot of mistakes on this map. Absurdly, it took almost half an hour for me to plod through it when half that time at most would probably have been more fitting. I even resorted to Reactors.
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Feb 8, 2018 14:07
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Frigg 4-5 https://youtu.be/9978PHbhY0w  I thought this one was a bit interesting to play. To build a large network you need to take the low areas in the west. I thought about flying Odin City to the northwest to go for a quicker kill but I think that would probably be more frustrating.  Just two-and-a-half minutes in, and from here on it's pretty much a steady diet of holding the creeper off, then pushing it back as the network expands. Covered most of the map in green before putting a mortar up on the eastern heights to punish those emitters. 14 minutes plus here. https://youtu.be/SpCQncxKJT8  One of the more challenging Conquest levels so far. That southern ridge isn't easy to get to, and the lower territory in between will bring the Creeper right to us. No upgrades either.  A mortar pounds the central basin, and when the blasters push up the east side they'll clear a path to that southeast crater. From there, rolling up the emitters from east to west in a gradual sweep. Takes 18 minutes, but when it's clear the middle pair of Special Ops are unlocked.
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Feb 9, 2018 23:39
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Special Ops: Chess https://youtu.be/sxvPIUUJb-U  The vigilant observer will note that this board is only 5x7, whereas chess is 8x8, and so on. In terms of the map itself, we have a couple more artifacts, and four emitters to deal with. No upgrades or spores. Concentrating firepower on the low-lying squares will be important. I had technical issues when recording this so I actually did this mission most of the way through several times, giving me some practice. I knew how I wanted to handle it by that time. Doom Timer: 9:44 There's plenty of time to get going here.  The general pattern here is four collectors per square. Pushing straight for the middle of the board(everyone knows control of the centre is vital in chess) gets a mortar in place to start holding back the creeper some. That buys more time for expanding upwards and downwards.  Once all the territory has been spoken for, it's time for the drone bombers again. The lower squares aren't very deep, but enough for them to be effective. Hitting the western areas near the emitters relieves the pressure in the east, allowing blasters to clear more squares for expanding the network.  The artifacts in the middle of the map provide more notes from the developer.  Can't say that I've ever heard of this.  With four speed buildings ensuring ammunition gets to the front quickly, it's time to knock out the two nearest emitters.  Once that's done, there's no need really to worry about the last two. Pushing just a little more west gets us to the Totems, and we're done.  That went pretty smoothly, but the trial runs definitely help. Halfway through the bonus material now.
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Feb 10, 2018 23:38
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ChopRaider was an earlier game by the creator of Creeper World, Virgil Wall. It's a rather simple flash game. I never really played it but I can't say it looks very interesting.
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Feb 11, 2018 00:30
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I didn't play it when I beat this mission, but I went to play Whiteboard War today, and it's actually pretty fun. It's a pretty simple "you control one super weapon, clear the map of enemies". However, I like those types of games, so it's no surprise that I liked this one. Coincidentally, that's always why I want to wipe all the creeper off the face of the map on every mission.
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Feb 11, 2018 00:43
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Special Ops: DTD https://youtu.be/wvjjictFfHw  Dot-to-Dot? Aside from that, I got nothing here. Only small structures can fit on the high ground, and the creeper will reach us quickly. And what's up with those capsules ... surely there aren't survivors left to be found at this stage of the game. Upgrades nearby as well. Doom Timer: 3:00 Yeah that's a pretty short leash. Looks like the deal here is to get as many collectors up as quickly as possible with minimal defenses, then expand.  That seemed to be about here. 2.5 energy collected isn't a lot, but I thought it would be enough and wanted to make sure we didn't lose any ground.  After expanding a bit more and getting some speed going, I decided that, with the situation roughly at an equilibrium, I wanted to get some reactors to help with the situation. This isn't necessary, but makes expanding a little more comfortable. Better safe than sorry after what happened at Super Tax-Man. The upgrades in the northeast were my first target; the closest pair of emitters to knock out is also that general direction. I believe this is an example of 'synergy'.  Ok, so they really are survivors. Weird. Don't seem to serve any real purpose in this mission. Odin City would get destroyed long before they'd flood these higher points, so they're never going to get killed. I think there's something going on here I don't fully get.  Blasters. Lots and lots of them. That's what this fight was about, and after the first emitter pair was brought in line I think I spent as much time moving the guns forward as not. With the super-flat terrain I really saw no reason to even consider building anything else.  Didn't cover the whole map here, but came pretty close.  This pair of Special Ops were definitely not as difficult as the previous ones IMO. Perhaps I'm being lulled into a false sense of security ...
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Feb 11, 2018 15:51
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General Revil posted:I went to play Whiteboard War today, and it's actually pretty fun. It's a pretty simple "you control one super weapon, clear the map of enemies". However, I like those types of games, so it's no surprise that I liked this one. This got me thinking about why I enjoy Creeper World itself, and it's something I was never able to put my finger on before. I concluded it really just comes down to pacing for the most part. I find that it inhabits pretty close to a sweet-spot in terms of not being too fast or slow and keeping the brain active. When you slap down the first collector pair at the beginning and start thinking about what direction you want to build in, when you'll need to start getting weapons going, etc., the process begins. There aren't many times when it stops, and keeping in that time period of about 15 minutes a level or so is a good fit for the brain's typical attention span. Compared to say Offworld Trading Company, which scratches a somewhat similar itch but is much more frantic, CW just seems to hit the bullseye dead-on most of the time with this. Even though it's fairly simple and as mentioned doesn't require many strategic choices after the first few minutes, it's still there as something I enjoy and look forward to the next level after playing dozens of them.
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Feb 11, 2018 15:57
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To quote the Knuckle Cracker wiki: The map is based off a popular tower defence game called Desktop Tower Defence (DTD) made by Paul Preece. I have no idea what the deal with the survivor pods is. You probably need to get them all before you can win the level but that doesn't seem like much of a problem in normal play. Maybe it's a reference to DTD?
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Feb 11, 2018 16:06
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Thotimx posted:This got me thinking about why I enjoy Creeper World itself, and it's something I was never able to put my finger on before. I concluded it really just comes down to pacing for the most part. I find that it inhabits pretty close to a sweet-spot in terms of not being too fast or slow and keeping the brain active. When you slap down the first collector pair at the beginning and start thinking about what direction you want to build in, when you'll need to start getting weapons going, etc., the process begins. There aren't many times when it stops, and keeping in that time period of about 15 minutes a level or so is a good fit for the brain's typical attention span. Compared to say Offworld Trading Company, which scratches a somewhat similar itch but is much more frantic, CW just seems to hit the bullseye dead-on most of the time with this. Even though it's fairly simple and as mentioned doesn't require many strategic choices after the first few minutes, it's still there as something I enjoy and look forward to the next level after playing dozens of them. Kind of similar for me; I like that I hit a stable equilibrium and don't have to rush while considering my next move and can slowly press forwards.
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Feb 11, 2018 17:22
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I'm guessing the survivor pods, particularly the one near the top emitters, are there to add a little bit of time pressure just so you don't let the creeper endlessly pile up while building reactors.
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Feb 11, 2018 18:52
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Added Space posted:I'm guessing the survivor pods, particularly the one near the top emitters, are there to add a little bit of time pressure just so you don't let the creeper endlessly pile up while building reactors. With the fluid flow dynamics, I'm not sure it can pile up high enough to reach the pods without first flooding the entire low ground.
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Feb 11, 2018 19:05
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Thotimx, because we love http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld/mapcomments.php?id=6527&page=
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Feb 12, 2018 07:15
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Playing the Kongregate versions and having fun... gotta say, this LP really makes the game seem a lot easier than it is.
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Feb 12, 2018 15:52
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BlindSally posted:having fun... gotta say, this LP really makes the game seem a lot easier than it is. That's interesting, since most of the comments have been more along the lines of 'well, I did that in just over half the time you did', 'dude, use the reactors!', or 'normal is boring so I'm playing DD', etc. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of showing how a non-expert could screw things up, having killed all of humanity multiple times now. If people from all ends of the skill spectrum find it useful, I'll take that as a compliment though. General Revil posted:because we love watching you suffer. I'm going to open up the list of custom maps you should play with this level. I had a blast playing it. Hmm. Record is 18 minutes flat, median time on the leaderboard just under an hour. Took one person at least more than two. Sounds like that might take me a while. And I think the non-redacted quote might be more accurate :P.
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Feb 13, 2018 00:13
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haha, it was a bit of a struggle just to get through the tutorial levels. i'm getting the hang of it, but still don't have the game's rhythm down. i am looking forward to 'gitting gud' and crushing all of the thread's top scores.
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Feb 13, 2018 00:53
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Thotimx posted:Hmm. Record is 18 minutes flat, median time on the leaderboard just under an hour. Took one person at least more than two. Sounds like that might take me a while. And I think the non-redacted quote might be more accurate :P. For your own sanity, please don't play this level... -_-; I got part way through the level, at the 30 minute mark, and only pushed on to complete it because I had already put half an hour into it. Finished in 58:08... I wan those 58 minutes back. I think the 18 minute record either cheated (how, I'm not sure), or found some way of abusing a bug that I saw a couple of times during my playthough. In this custom map, it has pink-colored walls, similar to the ones that hold the creeper in, however the pink ones don't decay. On the flip side, connections between components (the white lines) cannot go through the blocks, and blasters cannot shot through them. (Mortars can shoot over, but you only have 2 already constructed, and are unable to build more until the end of the level). What I saw is that when a gun is flying, it can create connections over the walls, and packets can travel along those connections, same way that the city will keep spitting out packets when it flies to the portal at the end of each level. Maybe the 18 minute person used this to gather the speed upgrade early, and used that to push to the end.
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Feb 13, 2018 01:30
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There are actually 3, you're supposed to make unsupported blaster runs at the beginning to protect the third mortar from being destroyed until you can expand your network to reach it and activate it. The record might be a cheater. There's somebody that goes by Evil that has the record for almost every level in the entire franchise.
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Feb 13, 2018 03:02
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Or maybe they are just that good. In any case, I'll reserve judgment on trying that level for now, but will put it on the list of possibles. After the next pair of special ops missions I'll put up the official poll about post-bonus content.
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Feb 13, 2018 03:18
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Vidar Conquest, 1-3 https://youtu.be/azumtOv_pgQ  Doesn't look that special; a large low plain indicates there'll plenty of action for blasters and mostly just a fight for territory. Spores and just a single upgrade.  I didn't realize the main challenge of the level until quite a ways into it. Namely, that four of the five emitters, all on the western edge, are on ridges so small that you can't get a blaster up to them to cap them. The second one down is reachable, but that's the only one. Here I'm just starting to realize how much of a slog this is going to be, but I've got enough infrastructure to handle it. 22 minutes on this, some mistakes were made but it's basically a grind-it-out level no matter how you slice it. https://youtu.be/wp9dtaXoDcI  A nice pool to bombard, several upgrades, no spores, and totems aren't too close to emitters. As you can see here I relocated Odin City right away.  I made a rather bad over-building screwup at one point, but the basic idea here was to pound the low points with mortars, and push with the blaster towards the northern emitters. I left the eastern trio alone and snagged the last Totem for a faster completion here in just under 14 minutes. https://youtu.be/1Za6G6FTknc  This one's a little different. It didn't take long to notice that all three Totems are either on or reachable from the high ground in the east. The rest of the map can basically be ignored once this fact is realized.  After occupying the northern plateau fully for maximum energy supply(without reactors, that is, naturally), a relay connecton allows a jump to the southeast where blasters push towards the final totem. A quick 6:19 for this one, really quite easy as long as you don't get distracted.
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Feb 13, 2018 14:03
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Vidar Conquest, 4-5 https://youtu.be/RI1ELkjQvA8  Spores and no high ground to claim; won't be long until we're fighting the Creeper for space.  That fight starts here, less than two and a half minutes in as we prepare to grab the second and final upgrade. Pushing south to cap a couple of emitters from here, I eventually claimed the win in 18-minutes plus. https://youtu.be/3-Brg74vcCY  Don't remember which one it was, but I did another 'island' map not that long ago, and of course there was one early on in Story mode. I like them largely because they are quite different from the standard fare.  Starting in the northeast, I expanded to the other nearby islands reasonably quickly, but there was no way to get to the two Totems in the west without doing a lot more fighting. There's almost a total island wall blocking off Creeper access to the southeast, so I started there and made some mistakes but was able to push westwards fairly consistently. A little under twenty minutes for the time, and another 'Conquest pentagon' was completed.
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Feb 15, 2018 23:36
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I managed to forgetfully delete my recordings of my first time through the next pair of missions, so I replayed them. The first time was not as easy naturally. Special Ops: Poison https://youtu.be/nY6Nw9GGWXg  This map ends up not being as imposing as it's symbol. Three emitters which clearly are going to flood the outer plain quite quickly. The crossbones form an effective protective barrier though, keeping Odin City safe initially. Doom Timer: 7:17 A quite decent amount of time for this stage of things. Eventually creeper will leak in around the south, and it'll get produced reasonably quickly by the emitter trio on the skull.  Didn't take me long to do this even on the first attempt. Here we're about a minute and a half in. The question of course is 'now what'? You can already see the beginnings of my answer.  Drones target the 'eyes', essentially creating a diversion so I can get a foothold further up.  A few minutes later, the operation has expanded and a couple blasters are place by Odin City, beating back creeper that was ... well ... creeping around the edges there.  Once the 'nose' is seized and all three blasters sufficiently supplied, the eye emitters are neutralized and victory is near.  I didn't find this particularly difficult even on the first try, but it took almost twice as long as I fumbled about for some while to find the best way to push onto the skull.
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Feb 17, 2018 01:55
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It's interesting seeing your different play style. I usually go for the traditional mortar-blaster push supported by tons of reactors, and hardly ever build drones. Mortars are great for blaster pushes, even with mostly flat terrain, as their longer range and power takes pressure off the blasters, making it easier to push forward. gently caress playing this game without pause though  I recall having a fair bit of trouble with DTD. I found that the flat land made it impossible to pinpoint a couple of strategic points to defend, and the only way to survive is to just blanket the area with a wall of blasters. I lost a fair bit of time playing a certain type of CW3 custom map. The CW3 map editor is heavily scriptable, and some enterprising players created a series of maps where you play as the creeper. It's a weird twist on the formula.
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Feb 17, 2018 08:15
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Is it me, or is the audio track on Poison messed up? It sounds like it's recording through a built-in mic. I'm finding the play style works pretty well for the LP format, since in most levels you're not rushing to win — or not to lose —and it can be just the gradual expansion of territory. It's relaxing in a way to see the map slowly get covered in green. On the DTD level, that was one of the first Flash games I played (and the first use of this user name, in fact). You'd place down your towers, which were squares with the weapon indicated on them. I'm guessing it was just an attempt to have the squares have something different on them, to vaguely resemble placed towers. Another connection is that the enemies were called 'creeps' and entered at either the left or top entrance, in the same manner as the CW map.
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Feb 17, 2018 08:40
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There's a steam sale this weekend. All CW games are 20% off, too.
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Feb 17, 2018 09:16
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Kangra posted:Is it me, or is the audio track on Poison messed up? It sounds like it's recording through a built-in mic. Interesting. I think the video itself is crap, but nothing was changed in the audio setup. I do agree it sounds off, but I couldn't tell you why. Also thanks for the DTD info, that's good to know. redleader posted:It's interesting seeing your different play style. I usually go for the traditional mortar-blaster push supported by tons of reactors, and hardly ever build drones A lot of the later maps I've found I just can't hit there where I want to(crater or emitter) without them. carbon dioxide posted:All CW games are 20% off Too late, I already have all of 'em :P.
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Feb 17, 2018 14:52
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Special Ops: ChopRaider https://youtu.be/uyJ38uGthTU  One emitter. A strong one, but still. Spores with a 3-minute timer. This doesn't look bad at all. Doom Timer: 6:28 Appearances can be deceiving though. There's more to this planet than initially meets the eye. The first time I did this, I lost.  This is about as far as you can get away with building before getting ready for the creeper on the plain to start flooding everything, and the spore attack.  I built two SAMs the first time I tried this level. That's not even close to being enough. Usually the spore attacks are an afterthought basically, and that would be plenty. That isn't the case here. Four sites is more than needed for the four incoming here though; in retrospect I'd recommend three of them and going up to 4+ soon after. The careful observer will note that we've already got an indication of just how much fun this will be though. Look at the Spore Attack timer. They haven't even gotten shot down yet and it's already down to less than a minute. And it will get worse. I've also got a drone going to hit the emitter and increase the pressure on the blasters. Unfortunately, even though I've been through this before, I have also made a possibly fatal mistake; the storage and speed buildings. We'll see shortly why this is wrong. The four spores are shot down with 51 seconds to go on the next attack timer. It takes about half that time to get their ammunition back to full.  The second wave. All the buildings are done and the bomber is powering up. That's good. This time six spores come in -- and by the time they are destroyed, I have exactly 18 seconds before the next group enters. And that right there is the big challenge with ChopRaider. You simply don't have time to do much building in between spore attacks. If you don't have your basic setup right by the time the second attack hits, it ain't gonna never happen. As we will see shortly. Ten come in the third wave, and I barely get them all.  Another ten in the fourth one, and this time they take out a SAM site -- I tried to expand my network to increase energy. You can see the northern blasters are struggling to keep up, even with bomber support. Now I've got to try to rebuild a SAM and get that reactor going and get ready for ... 21 seconds from now. There just isn't time, and that's an ugly deficit number when operating at just over 2 energy income. This becomes a pattern for a bit, but I'm barely holding out and things get a bit better when that reactor comes online. I start a second one.  Here's something helpful that's good to keep in mind. Two missiles have fired at the same Spore; when one hits and blows up its target like it has here, the second one will switch to another spore ... even if it isn't within range of the SAM. For that reason, clustering SAMs close together, esp. if you know what direction the spores are coming from, can be quite effective. You definitely don't want to space them out too far on this map, as they'll never get resupplied in time to deal with the volume of spores coming in and 'flooding the zone'. However, this does also mean that you'll sometimes waste a missile at the end of a wave when multiple SAMs fire on the last spore. Confession: Until I played this level, I didn't realize you could move the SAMs. I don't know why, I just assumed they were stationary. Kinda dumb in retrospect, since moving weapons is a big thing and ALL the other types move.  Like, say, this one. Notice that none of the SAMs have enough ammunition to fire. My line of defense is breached, and this one lands basically right on top of the under-construction reactor. I'm lucky it doesn't take out the operational one. I had only 3 SAMs up when this attack hit, and that's not enough. I'm slowly losing the 'stalemate' here, and the next wave does a little more damage. The one after that ...  Yeah. It's over. I know the basic idea for how to beat this level, and I still lost. Didn't split up the videos this time, just restarted(a little after 11 minutes)  Started the same, but then built a couple of reactors on the re-start as soon as the collectors were up. More energy = faster re-arming = better recovery between attacks. That's the goal at least. I had two Reactors up by the time the first wave hit, and finished my fourth about the time the second one arrived and things started getting real. Over 3 energy collected now, significantly more than the first time. That's a lot better. I would add two more for a total of six before starting to expand with more collectors and SAMs. Still had the rare spore get through, but I was able to repair/rebuild afterwards much faster.  Moving around the blades of the chopper's 'wings' seems a sensible way to expand here. The little bit of energy gained from the collectors isn't nearly as valuable as getting closer to the emitter.  The artifact text of course. Really pimping that cross-promotion there aren't we Virgil?? Ima sticking with just LPing your entire CW series. I hope that's enough for you; I don't plan on playing ChopRaider.  After a couple of attempts, I get this rather bizarre-looking line of structures in place to quiet that emitter. That pretty much takes care of things, but it's still not entirely a non-event to get to the final Totem.  Spores take out one of my Relays, so I build them around both sides for redundancy. It's over.  This is one of the more challenging levels, and also one of the most unique. It's the only one where Spores are a major threat beyond just the overhead of building and arming a few token SAMs. It's annoying, but I also must give it a seal of approval as a welcome change to the usual formula.
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Feb 17, 2018 17:37
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Creeper World 1: Anniversary Edition Post-Bonus Content Poll Ok, we're nearing the end of the official bonus content. One more conquest pentagon, two more special ops missions, four updates in all. You all have until I post the last one to choose what additional maps, if any, I play when that's done. Or put another way, whether or not 55 levels are sufficient. Options: ** Enough already -- let's see about that sequel ** Chronometer -- Select a date in past, present, or future history and I'll see how I do at the randomly generated map that uses that date as a seed. These don't tend to be as interesting, they are going to be like the more generic Conquest maps most likely. But if you want it, I'll do it. ** User-made Maps -- General Revil has already suggested one. There are 6,506 of them in all, here: http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld/viewmaps.php . One caveat: I'm not playing Bored to Death, the map with the longest record-best time of 167 minutes. The author states that it was literally made as basically a troll map, to the point of actively requesting 1-star ratings for it. A tedious, boring fight that has all of the things you can put on a map that he doesn't like. Only 5 completion scores were ever submitted -- even though it was rated over 100 times!! I won't be the 6th. I refuse. Can't make me. So if you want to see that one ... PLAY IT YOURSELF. I'll at least consider any others that are submitted. Another option here is that I could just do a handful of varying difficulty levels and times, selected at random(say 5-10 in all) just to give some sort of cross-section of the kinds of things the community came up with. But if people want me to play more, it'd be better to give me ones you found interesting, because I'm sure there's lots of crap out there as well. So, brave readers/viewers of my CW misadventures, what say you all? Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Feb 17, 2018 |
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Feb 17, 2018 17:38
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I say play any specific suggestions from people in this thread, then move on. I'd much rather see you spend a longer time on custom maps in CW3, they're more diverse than anything possible in CW1.
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Feb 17, 2018 17:55
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I'd say move on to the sequel, maybe with a couple user-made maps first if they showcase a significantly different challenge than the majority of the maps (like ChopRaider and the spores).
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Feb 17, 2018 18:14
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sequel
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Feb 17, 2018 21:06
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For Chronomerter, pick 2-3 dates that are special to you, and do the same kind of update as you were doing for conquest maps. They're essentially the same thing, but my inner completionist wants you to show it off for the not particularly special addition that it is. For User Maps, I'll see if I can find the time to find a couple more fun/evil ones to share. As for this mission. This was the only one that gave me problems it was truly evil. In hind sight, I should have only attacked from the left side of the chopper, and used the natural chokepoint to not worry about one side. Instead, I pushed on both sides. All of my SAMs were setup in pairs, and this is also where I consciously noticed the way extra missiles behaved in CW, but I'm sure it happened to me before. It was a massive slog to make it through this including multiple restarts, but drat did it feel good to finally beat this.
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Feb 17, 2018 21:20
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Carbon dioxide posted:I say play any specific suggestions from people in this thread, then move on.
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Feb 17, 2018 23:28
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sequel
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Feb 17, 2018 23:53
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I vote sequel. I blitzed through the Kongregate version of CW2 and would be interested in seeing the version.
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Feb 18, 2018 01:01
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