Weekly History Tournament - Original Star Trek Crew - Closing November 14

[mopa42]

My (unimpressive) scores:

Mar 22  1931     8163  13:30
Mar 26  1931     9771   1:24
Jan 20  1920     8391  11:30
Mar  3  1920     9774   1:23
Dec 28  1932     9343  4:13

Total:          45442  32:00

I am quite interesting in seeing the trick for solving Mar 22, Jan 20, and Dec 28 in under a third of my time.

[ctuna]

Map          Date              Time                   Score
1.    March 22, 1931           9:06                8683
2.    March 26, 1931           1:19                9785
3.   January 20, 1920          7:49                8847
4.   March 3, 1920              1:19                9785
5.   December 28, 1932       3:19                9350
       TOTALS                   19:33              46576

Not a good week for me (in my own tournament, too). Looks like some more surprises for most of us when the winners share their techniques.

[UpperKEES]

I have posted some tips & guidelines for the winner of a tournament regarding calculating the score totals and creating the new tournament topic, so please have a look. Don't hesitate to ask any questions. :)

[Kapoios]

Yay! I'm a winner!

According to my duties, here are the results:


Tournament Results

Rank	Player	Total Score
1.	Kapoios	48223
2.	hi	48008
3.	CTUNA	46576
4.	Colin	46568
5.	Allan	45676
6.	mopa42	45442
7.	Katra	45291
8.	Pezzle	45152
9.	Izz	44689
10.	Wally	43147
11.	Richie Rich	29081*
12.	chretip	16736*
13.	IcEcAt	15572*
14.	RandyTravis	9355*

*   Did not finish all maps.

[UpperKEES]

Congrats! :)

And that was a pretty close call for the bronze medal! :o

[Kapoios]

Here are some screenshots of my solutions. Most of them probably make the solutions pretty obvious, but I will be more than glad to answer questions.

Map 1
March 22, 1931


Map 2
March 26, 1931


Map 3
January 20, 1920


Map 4
March 3, 1920


Map 5
December 28, 1932


OK, the attachments are here and the pictures should appear inline above but I suck at foruming. So, because a boy sometimes needs to sleep, I'll go  to bed now and fix this tomorrow. I might also add some comments for the more interesting maps. But do ask questions if you wish!

[ctuna]

Good going, Kapoios. To start with, on map 1, where did you have OC? Did you fly it the whole time?

And on map 5, how did you keep the upper collector from being "creeped"? No matter what I tried, without a mortar, the flow was too fast to allow me to fly OC and a connector to the last totem.

[Kapoios]

Good going, Kapoios. To start with, on map 1, where did you have OC? Did you fly it the whole time?

Thank you! No, the city was down most of the time. Here is a screenshot of my situation at approximately 1:11. The blaster on the left of OC has just started getting built and it will fire just in time before the collector on top of it gets destroyed by the creeper. After that I will keep moving the blaster occasionally in the 5-6 squares beside the lake above OC so that it also fires in the lake a bit and not just on the thin creeper. This way it spends much less energy (since it flies and hence doesn't fire most of the time) and is equally efficient at holding back the creeper. Eventually, when the city starts flying to the totem on the top left, I retire the blaster to make it part of the bridge. This is why there are some destroyed collectors and connections in my first screenshot.

And on map 5, how did you keep the upper collector from being "creeped"? No matter what I tried, without a mortar, the flow was too fast to allow me to fly OC and a connector to the last totem.

This is the reason that the bridge element is a blaster instead of a SAM, which would be cheaper. The blaster has actually taken one red packet of energy (since 5 shots turned out to be enough; I never tried 4, since one packet contains 5 anyway!) and emptied it in the lake. It is important to empty it in the lake instead of on the thin creeper (see upperKEES's quiz thread for an explanation how blasters work. They are most energy efficient when creeper is at least 1 square deep). So, after OC finishes building the blaster and its one packet of energy, you fly it inside the lake, somewhere near the end that's near the totem, while OC charges the totems. To make it more efficient, you let it fire once or twice and then you make it do a small flight or a jump. This way the creeper gets rearranged during the jump to not have thin edges where the blaster's energy gets wasted. You have time for at least two very little flights before you need it for the bridge so something like 2 shots-flight/jump-2 shots-flight/jump-1 shot works well. Now the emitters have to refill the lake taking the creeper evolution neat the totem around 20 seconds back.

This should be easy to reproduce. If you can't reproduce it at first, let the blaster do 4 jumps in the lake and only fire once every time to do its 5 shots (or even give it two red packets). This will take the evolution of the creeper even more behind, but you might lose 2 seconds or so because it's not ready to connect with the city for the bridge (I haven't tried  it, since the other way worked). It still demonstrates the technique anyway.

PS: I'll post this week's maps soon! I haven't forgotten about it!

[Kapoios]

New weekly tournament map theme (and maps) posted here. Get to them!

[Colin]

Well congratulations Ctuna, I was working on improving the scores for map 1. . .
Was experimenting with flying the OC all over, but I ran out of time.  ;)

and Kapoios. . . We had the same strategy for Maps 2 and 4. On map 3 I did a
similar move to get to the lower totem, and upper totem. I never would have
thought of flying everything.  :o

[ctuna]

Eventually, when the city starts flying to the totem on the top left, I retire the blaster to make it part of the bridge. This is why there are some destroyed collectors and connections in my first screenshot.

I suspected one bridging blaster was part of the pre-move defense, but I really didn't think it out. I had much the same start, but took a lot longer to generate what I thought was enough energy. Also, I have a hard time keeping the energy high enough to feed the blasters when OC is airborne. Maybe there's something to that double-click on the red button.

And thanks for the kudos, Colin. I finally got tired of trying for incremental improvements, especially seeing how far out I was in some areas.

[Kapoios]

I suspected one bridging blaster was part of the pre-move defense, but I really didn't think it out. I had much the same start, but took a lot longer to generate what I thought was enough energy. Also, I have a hard time keeping the energy high enough to feed the blasters when OC is airborne. Maybe there's something to that double-click on the red button.

The double-click thing probably won't help when you aren't generating enough energy. Though I guess you could start sending a bit more energy than you are allowed before you take off. In any case, I prefer to avoid abusing this bug at least until we decide it's a feature! What I did, was to actually let them starve. When the city took off the 4 blasters on the ground were mostly full with energy but the generation wasn't enough to keep them up. They were slowly emptying and starvation reached more than 20. And then, when the city got connected to the totem I disabled red packets so that it concentrated on charging the totem (this is why I didn't care about the broken connections and destroyed collectors. I still had significantly more than 2 energy generation to feed the totem). Obviously, those blasters were quickly getting empty, but they had enough to keep the creeper back until the rift would appear. Certainly a sensitive process. I only restarted red packets as soon as the 10th totem packet had been produced, but that might not even have been necessary.