This topic is for discussion of map #1733: Super Tower 3 PAC
(http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld3/queryMaps.php?query=thumbnailid&id=1733)
Author: J
Size: 96x63
Desc:
Another old script recycled in a #PAC map! #Jmaps #PlayAsCreeper #SuperTower
96 downloads and 5 scores submitted. There must be some key to victory that we're missing here. Spoilers?
Quote from: stdout on February 13, 2015, 07:31:41 PM
96 downloads and 5 scores submitted. There must be some key to victory that we're missing here. Spoilers?
me too please! i have tried pushing for all three nearest pz's, no joy, i end up swamped in AC. :o
what are we missing? 8)
2 problems
1 - game locks up if I try to load a save on this map.
2 - I've covered the entire map in creep and didn't win.
There's 6 scores up now, so its definitely possible. I'm at a Nuhages map level of frustration here :D
Well phew - if the experts are stumped, then I don't feel so bad about being so. :D
The first PZ you can take is the reactor guarded by two cannons, make sure you have the totem first.
With the top right base disconnected from its main energy source, you can starve it.
With only the starting emitter and one totem, you can destroy the PZ beam, but you cannot cover it in digi.
The super tower gains strenght exponentially (+10% per core returned), so it sorta acts as a time limit. The moving spore towers are the easiest to destroy, but you can't just do that by sending a single spore at them. You need half of a side covered in 1+ creeper.
If you don't get a victory, wait until the towers on the sides pop up and destroy them, once you've destroyed them you should get victory very soon.
As for the saves, I didn't test saving and loading, sorry for that.
This map is as hard as the original super tower map, which is to say near impossible. It took me multiple attempts to get it right. With most PAC maps, slow and steady is a viable tactic, not with this map as the amount of AC produced soon begins to overwhelm.
There was about a minute wait between all structures being destroyed, with the map knee-deep in creeper and entirely covered by digitalis, as the victory conditions being met.
(Also found a bug with the PAC code - if you accidentally target a spore tower at itself, you cannot untarget it. Not a problem when you have more than one, as you can use select all, but when you only have one ... game restarted
Spoiler
spore towers are probably useless in this map as it is difficult to keep the PZ beam knocked out for long enough to get much damage done.
)
Some hints?
Spoiler
With some luck and judgement, it is possible to take the PZ north west of the starting emitter. No other emitters are possible to reach (the PZ beam is possible to destroy but seems to be just out of reach to plaster with digitalis). Then persuade one of the CN that it would be happier in orbit - one is close to energy deficit - the networks are independent so knocking one out knocks out a lot of the defence.
took the north west PZ, wowzer that was some micro control of the field pushing! ::)
this is totally doable now, but it's going to take a bunch of rage quits and reloads i think! :o
a little too random i think, but it could be because i have no idea what the moving CRPL units are actually doing. are we able to destroy/use them if we get creeper on them? the text hint isn't too clear, but i don't think i played the original so i dunno if it was explained before.
still entertaining, if frustrating! 8)
Quote from: RrR on February 14, 2015, 06:02:57 AM(Also found a bug with the PAC code - if you accidentally target a spore tower at itself, you cannot untarget it. Not a problem when you have more than one, as you can use select all, but when you only have one ... game restarted
There is a way. Use the multi-select method. Click and draw a box around the spore tower and it will select the lone tower. Then you can click elsewhere to move the target.
The game just "stopped" - at 8:32 mission time everything stops moving except the blasters continue to act like they are shooting (but no shots are fired). The timer continues moving and I can select my towers and change their status but nothing happens.
Quote from: stdout on February 14, 2015, 08:39:47 AM
The game just "stopped" - at 8:32 mission time everything stops moving except the blasters continue to act like they are shooting (but no shots are fired). The timer continues moving and I can select my towers and change their status but nothing happens.
I got that, too. I thought it was my PC, to be honest. Very odd.
The PAC scripts work normally and the ST scripts never had any trouble before (they're attached to a seperate core), the only things I changed were some variables, an extra victory condition and I added some lines to the ST scripts so that they don't continue while paused. I don't know why the game stopped but I think it's the best to simply not use the ST scripts anymore in PAC maps :P
Something is off with this map. Any time I reloaded a save that was after about 3 minutes game time it would either have randomly placed piles of -10 AC, or if later in the game it would freeze. Not sure it that's part of the challenge, but it was really annoying.
As for the map, it was extremely difficult and frustration until I figured out how to take out the NW base. After that it's a piece of cake.
The ST does add 100 piles of 10 AC to the map if you manage to decrease it's energy level below a cetain level, so if you're seeing multiple piles of 10 AC before you killed a single core, something went wrong. It can only happen once so it shouldn't happen again if save and load again. The only reason I can think of now is that the :Awake function broke the do-loop (which has a Delay command in it), making the ST check for the current power before the towers are returned.
The ST loops through 6 items (energy used -> returned):
1 - spores - the spore towers moving along the sides create 3 AC spores each (10->11)
2 - creeperkillers - fast moving emitters remove creeper and AC from the sides (e/10->e/10)
3 - emitters - some AC emitters emitting AC (e/16->e/16+1)
4 - multiplier - multiplies the creeper underneath it with 1.1 (14->15)
5 - AC piles - Some piles of 5 AC, you probably won't notice this, but it does add 10 frames delay to the script for every pile added. One pile for every 10 energy (0->0)
6 - multiplier - collects creeper and AC, and releases 1.5 times as much at the end of the run (18->20)
every time i reloaded there was more AC added also it seems
so it's a play straight through only map? bummer. :(
already really frustrated with it, one to come back to maybe? 8)
Def a major bug, every time I reload a saved game it completely freezes after a few seconds. Shame as i really enjoyed it. The start was a challenge and took a few restarts. If you don't get off to a strong start this is very challenging, if you can take the north PZ in a few mins your laughing.
I would expect a game to be the after loading like if you never saved/loaded, sorry for being ignorant to load bugs. Playing 30 minutes straight luckily isn't that long (you can play on x4 once you've got you third PZ).
Anyways, is 15 replies before the next map is posted a new record? ::)
I'm still stuck at only taking the NW PZ. Anyone have some tips more specific than "starve the NE CN"? I don't know why, but this one is driving me crazier each play through.
I only had reload bugs after I took the second PZ, so if you want to have a save point: do it once you have grown dig in the middle of the PZ.
I finally did it, but there was a 53 second delay on a victory after I had filled up the map with creeper. I'm not sure if I missed a victory condition or what.
I really like the AC induced time limit though. Superbly laid out construction, I hope there are more like this to come ;D
If you read the dialogs (and remember the story of ST2), the creeper won't leave the world with the super-tower still active, so I added it as victory condition, it was probably better without. If i'm ever going to re-use the ST scripts, I'll make sure it works after loading (taking out the victory condition, energy boost and awake function might work, but I'm not 100% sure). Thanks for playing and commenting.
Quote from: metalsiagon on February 14, 2015, 06:18:55 PM
I'm still stuck at only taking the NW PZ. Anyone have some tips more specific than "starve the NE CN"? I don't know why, but this one is driving me crazier each play through.
Spoiler
The NE CN becomes extremely energy starved if it has to resupply the guppy - force it to rebuild a couple of reactors.
Spoiler
The southern PC is the most vulnerable - attack from the south. Then attack from the west.
Couldn't prevent the starting emitter from being nullified. Any ideas?
Quote from: hbarudi on April 29, 2015, 04:52:01 AM
Couldn't prevent the starting emitter from being nullified. Any ideas?
Usual tactics are changing to burst mode and pushing with fields. If that doesn't work try to mess a bit with digi (adding and/or removing, removing digi growth returns the 1 creeper used). It has been far too long ago since I've played this map so the only hope you have is the other comments. I must warn you that this map doesn't support saving/loading due a bug in the crpl scripts, so finish it in one run.
Quote from: hbarudi on April 29, 2015, 04:52:01 AM
Couldn't prevent the starting emitter from being nullified. Any ideas?
Spoiler
Simple burst mode on the emitter while mass digitalis-ing everything will kill the nullifier on the 2nd pulse, just make sure to switch to pulse mode as soon as play begins. You'll be able to pick up the first field thing to the right as well.
Stuck with 2 creepers, initial and one to the north with previous reactor. What's next? Can't go anywhere from there, and spore tower is useless. Can kill the beam tower on pz, but not build digitalis or even make it alive.
Quote from: damalakas on May 29, 2015, 05:17:47 PM
Stuck with 2 creepers, initial and one to the north with previous reactor. What's next? Can't go anywhere from there, and spore tower is useless. Can kill the beam tower on pz, but not build digitalis or even make it alive.
You should be able to take down the NE CN (right from the top-middle). Destroy as many reactors as you can and when the guppy takes 120 energy, the weapons should be starved. You might even be able to send a spore before the PZ beam rebuilds. If you base is flooded with AC, you missed the time limit, restart and speedrun through it again (yes, it's a hard map).
Definitely a tough map. I think I started it a few weeks ago but after hitting a brick wall that hit me back, I decided it would be more pleasant to slowly hammer rusty screws under my toenails for a bit. I did that for a few weeks, then when I came back I restarted and was finally able to beat it.
I did notice that when I loaded the game I'd saved @ 13 minutes the AC had advanced significantly. I still managed to plow through but it was grueling. Even WITH potato chips... One thing I thought might be helpful for the "Hints" section is to have some time/achievement markers so you can tell if you're on a good pace to win or not. I re-loaded several times after the 13-minute load and did not see the problem getting worse so I continued...
Here's the path I took with times included...
Spoiler
~13 minutes - Took down upper right CN. (I used burst to get TO the CN, then regular after that)
~19 minutes - took the two PZ's to the right of that CN. (I loaded a saved game @ 13m and that's when the AC had multiplied like crazy. Almost started over at that point but wanted to see if it was do-able)
~23 minutes - took down the lower right CN and PZ near it.
From here, I targeted the relay in the middle and it was all easy from there.
wtf I can't do this. I keep trying to take the NE CN out but I just get flooded with AC before I can.
Like, I get the starting emitter safe. Good. I get the totem for pushing power, fine, easy. I get the second emitter from the reactor PZ. Easy, good. I've followed the advice others have given on this forum to starve the NE CN. It's starved, I keep starving it every so often as I use the support from the second emitter to push creeper from the starting emitter to push through the shield to take the shield out, the reactor and the cannon out, pushing towards the CN. Golden, I'm doing CN damage. I can't push farther. But then, as I'm doing CN damage, suddenly AC spore towers start spitting AC everywhere and I can never push back to the CN again. I'm stuck.
This map is genuinely frustrating me.
I tried it again, and I'm stuck as well at the same point. The spores coming at ~10 minutes are quite heavy. I tried speedrunning the first part and managed to do some CN damage well before the spores came in, but that still wasn't enough to send it home.
LOL! Well, if you made a map 5 years ago that you can't beat now... prolly the ol' reflexes are getting slower just like mine. #socialsecuritygaming
I remember this map. I actually remembered it just from reading the description I posted. I went back and looked and happened to have three save files. Maybe the pics will help. From what I remember, if you can't get this far by the time shown on the pictures, I'd recommend that you probably restart. My times aren't typically very good so following this strategy isn't gonna win you any awards. But all I care about is winning the game. Getting the highest score takes too long :P
(https://i.postimg.cc/PPfdzpMB/pac-1.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/PPfdzpMB)
This is at 12:36
(https://i.postimg.cc/xkP2z9z0/pac-2.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/xkP2z9z0)
15:43
(https://i.postimg.cc/DmLcdmzd/pac-3.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/DmLcdmzd)
19:04
Hope this helps! Good luck!
Quote from: Johnny Haywire on March 27, 2020, 12:52:15 AM
Getting the highest score takes too long :P
Hahaha, And this is why I say scores are worthless.
Cheers...
Scores may be worthless, but s'mores definitely aren't! How cool would be if you got some s'mores for winning a map? I hope that feature is available in CW4! 8)