ok ... anyone else get massively sidetracked by this little toy and spend most of the mission where you get it building the 'perfect' castle ?
I mostly play without terps, they take too much energy and time to me. Only on missions like mistet I complete the wall and on Chanson I used it to attack.
Yes - I over-use terps to create large flat areas for collectors and reactors. I really love the sense of symmetry you can get when there is a large flat area filled completely up with reactors :)
it depends on the map for me, i like massive flat landscapes for my mega energy farms, especially on the huge maps. also a bit ocd about symmetry ;)
on some maps though time and score seems more important, and on many there's no time or energy for terps.
so sort of... 8)
The map you get them, I went a bit over board on my first play, then I wised up, restarted, and got a foothold without red connecting lines. :P
As I don't really play for time, if I see areas I could put stuff down on, or there's a wall that I need to make wider for weapons that can't shoot over them, or I just want to ensure the collectors have full access to lane (I notice a line of sight thing going on, and them one cell holes in the ground can block collectors' area of collection), I will use terps. The map you get your first air craft on, that was one I used them a bit more than normal. Just got to the story map with bombers.
They are wonderful for building out into a giant pool of creeper so you can get right next to that emitter without literally wading through all that creeper. All you have to do is take a blaster and maybe a sprayer and chain relay's along behind you. I build repeating T patterns... 3 wide so it fits perfectly. 1 mortar 1 blaster 1 sprayer and the Terp to build my T's.
In some maps there needed, although not on any story maps. It's much more fun to mess arounf with them though. Make the perfect symmetrical castle and attack the Creeper.
I've played several of the games both ways and when attacking uphill, I find it takes less energy (and time) to build a path with TERP's and kill the target.
YMMV
:)
I just had to play ...
Quote from: xing on October 04, 2013, 06:28:36 PM
I just had to play ...
And so the insanity starts... :)
nice, but i still believe that you will get more reactors out of the diamond pattern from CW1.....
I foresee a 'Terp Art' thread.... :)
Quote from: Batstar on October 04, 2013, 05:38:14 PM
They are wonderful for building out into a giant pool of creeper so you can get right next to that emitter without literally wading through all that creeper. All you have to do is take a blaster and maybe a sprayer and chain relay's along behind you. I build repeating T patterns... 3 wide so it fits perfectly. 1 mortar 1 blaster 1 sprayer and the Terp to build my T's.
This is my favourite Terp tactic too.
Variations I also use are Virgil's original 'Roman Style' where you push a ramp out into the Creeper, and my favourite -'piles' where Relays are up on raised mounds and the Creeper swirls around their foundations.
Note: coupling Shields with Terps is very effective.
When I first joined the beta testers during the alph phase, I was obssessed with terraforming perfect symmetry.
I wanted to make the largest reactor/collector farms I thought I could fit into my backlines, so I flattened out many natural formations and often covered whole fourths of maps with farms. I occasionally built walls big enough to support pulse anons and mortars, but not nearly as often as I expanded so massively.
Overtime, I got better at time management and focusing on getting the job done, but I sometimes still try to make perfect farms. If I could lay collectors at optimal distances regarding production and space consumption, I could almost never settle to mere collector ranches with no reactors inbetween.
It also used to really annoy me whenever an ore deposit or a totem would mess that symmetry up completely by not being symmetric to nearby map edges (not terrain edges) in which case I had large, empty cell groups which would otherwise be practically invisible with collectors/reactors.
It sometimes still bothers me to be imperfectly symmetrical before winning, but now I can live with it more easily.
Quote from: Cavemaniac on October 04, 2013, 08:47:34 PM
Quote from: Batstar on October 04, 2013, 05:38:14 PM
They are wonderful for building out into a giant pool of creeper so you can get right next to that emitter without literally wading through all that creeper. All you have to do is take a blaster and maybe a sprayer and chain relay's along behind you. I build repeating T patterns... 3 wide so it fits perfectly. 1 mortar 1 blaster 1 sprayer and the Terp to build my T's.
This is my favourite Terp tactic too.
Variations I also use are Virgil's original 'Roman Style' where you push a ramp out into the Creeper, and my favourite -'piles' where Relays are up on raised mounds and the Creeper swirls around their foundations.
Note: coupling Shields with Terps is very effective.
Agreed!
Terps are just fun.. They add a nice strategic value.. There's been a couple of times I've been at a standstill and throwing everything I could thing of... Then terps saved the day..
Quote from: xing on October 04, 2013, 06:28:36 PM
I just had to play ...
Your terp art reminded me of computer core memory of old :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KL_CoreMemory.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KL_CoreMemory.jpg)
Quote from: Cruster on October 05, 2013, 06:07:07 AM
Quote from: xing on October 04, 2013, 06:28:36 PM
I just had to play ...
Your terp art reminded me of computer core memory of old :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KL_CoreMemory.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KL_CoreMemory.jpg)
It's weird you should say that...
http://knucklecracker.com/forums/index.php?topic=13861.msg100460#msg100460
Interesting read. It's amazing what was achieved then with what now seems so crude. Thanks for the link!
When I was at college some time back (cough), I remember having to wait for the results of your (Fortran) program to have run at the computer center.... usually a meaningless printout as you'd missed off a comma or such like ;D (apologies for meandering off topic)
Ahhh...the days of FORTRAN IV. One of the few fond memories of those days was playing 'Gorilla' in Basic.
RAM chip anyone?
http://www.yellow-llama.com/whats-being-loaded-into-this-plane/
Quote from: Helper on October 05, 2013, 09:34:18 AM
Ahhh...the days of FORTRAN IV. One of the few fond memories of those days was playing 'Gorilla' in Basic.
RAM chip anyone?
http://www.yellow-llama.com/whats-being-loaded-into-this-plane/
Wow! ;D