Custom Map #1173: Turkos Prime. By: planetfall

[AutoPost]

This topic is for discussion of map #1173: Turkos Prime


Author: planetfall
Size: 200x72

Desc:
[PF #14] You were too late! Survive and secure the death trap Turkos Prime has become! Warning: Difficult and highly processor intensive. #CRPL #CustomEnemy #CustomUnit #Spores #Digitalis #Runners #Missiles #CorruptedForge #Flamethrowers #ShieldDrones #Boss #Hard #PFSeries

[planetfall]

157 days since I started this stupid project. It got drawn out by some bugs with the engine but it was ultimately my procrastination, not technical difficulties or personal business, that made it take this long... my apologies.

This map is hard. Really hard. You may think it's hard going down the road to the chemist's, but that's peanuts to this map. So if you're determined to beat it, but can't quite figure it out, here are some tips:

Spoiler

1. A beam station constructed with four relays can fire continuously. This is useful for destroying shields and super missiles. Build them on power zones for maximum effect.

[close]

Spoiler

2. The corrupted-forge-powered missile barrage, which is normally quite weak, is actually very powerful in this map because there are so many totems and the missiles have quite a high health. You'll need several PZ beams to fend them off. Alternately, they can be absorbed by sanctuary shields.

[close]

Spoiler

3. The giant missile launchers on Foxglove Station don't kid around. They can cause massive havoc even if you have plenty of beams because the missiles themselves carry flamethrowers! Again, sanctuary shields are your friend.

[close]

Spoiler

4. Sanctuary shields are the only way to defend from the laser satellites, but the initial ones can't take much punishment. Spread your base out so that the damage is split between more shields.

[close]

Spoiler

5. A suicide base to destroy one of the corrupted constructors is almost mandatory. I'll leave it to you to figure out what the terp is for.

[close]

Spoiler

6. Complete map #444 to unlock a super ability! Good targets for it are:

Spoiler

The corrupted forge, the AE tower, the flamethrower at the top-left of the fortress area. Choosing the forge will help you survive more easily, but the others are very annoying late-game.

[close]

[close]

Spoiler

7. Start sniping drones early on! Super-strong shields on the laser satellites and flamethrowers are annoying to deal with later (though certainly not impossible.)

[close]

Spoiler

8. Flame drones deal damage very slowly, but do so constantly. They are excellent for stopping enemy shields from regenerating while your beams reload.

[close]

Spoiler

9. Place a constructor on the output area of a factory to mass produce sanctuary shields (and, less often, constructors for use in dark beams. NOTE: constructors cause a lot of lag, so don't build more than you need.)

[close]

Spoiler

10. Aim your dark beams correctly. The weak spot of Foxglove Station is the center, the weak spot of the laser satellites is the beam focus. For destroying the space things or shields you should set them to have zero beam spread, but if you want to use dark beams against creeper you should set them to have at least a little. Remember you can change the beam angle while they are still firing.

[close]

[Flabort]

IT'S HERE!
Also, I couldn't beat it while helping with bugtesting.
This is one hard one, but I definitely recommend it.

[12345ieee]

I want to be the first to say this is really an awesome map, there is a lot of thinking and skill involved in every phase of the game.

I also didn't look at the spoilers before playing and would like to give my opinion on some of them:

Spoiler

4. Sanctuary shields are the only way to defend from the laser satellites, but the initial ones can't take much punishment. Spread your base out so that the damage is split between more shields. - Also remember that PZ shields have an higher range but NOT an higher resistance, you need to make sure that a shield put in a PZ can withstand 2-3 times as much punishment as a non PZ one

[close]

Spoiler

5. A suicide base to destroy one of the corrupted constructors is almost mandatory. I'll leave it to you to figure out what the terp is for. - That base is NOT a suicide base if you play your cards well:

Spoiler

Those walls and the terp will save you at the beginning, the PZ left by the emitter will let you fend off the creeper and a PZ relay will seal the deal later

[close]

[close]

Spoiler

6. Complete map #444 to unlock a super ability! Good targets for it are:

Spoiler

The corrupted forge, the AE tower, the flamethrower at the top-left of the fortress area. Choosing the forge will help you survive more easily, but the others are very annoying late-game. - I choose the forge, but I didn't find the others annoying at all late game, runners were much more annoying than both those things

[close]

[close]

A last useful tip

The game is roughly split in 3 phases:
1) At the beginning the you-cannot-have-enough-beams phase (I mean it, keep building beams, if flying things can survive for more than a split second of being hit keep building)
2) After 8-10 mins starts the you-cannot-have-enough-sanctuary-shields phase (again, build and upgrade them. A lot. And don't forget to advance)
3) After you walk over the last forge there is the destruction-of-orbital-things phase (easiest one, build a fully upgraded dark beam and aim well)
During the initial phases save often!

[close]

I can post more tips and/or screenshots if needed, but I think it will detract from the fun of figuring it out.

Congratulations planetfall, I hope this series can continue with equally awesome maps.

[RrR]

I've just cleared the last flamethrower after about 15 minutes (the key to planetfall's excellent maps is to be be really aggressive and wipe things out before they have chance to upgrade). Now I'm stuck. I cannot get the dark beam to construct. I have the bertha on a pz on a constructor (carefully aligned) and two side constructors and nothing happens. What gives?

EDIT: tried another one. Worked just fine.

[planetfall]

I've just cleared the last flamethrower after about 15 minutes (the key to planetfall's excellent maps is to be be really aggressive and wipe things out before they have chance to upgrade). Now I'm stuck. I cannot get the dark beam to construct. I have the bertha on a pz on a constructor (carefully aligned) and two side constructors and nothing happens. What gives?

EDIT: tried another one. Worked just fine.

Sanctuary shields and constructors don't like each other in this map. The shields use SetCellOccupiedCount on every cell in their area so that projectiles and such don't have to use the relatively expensive GetEnemyUnitsInRange call every frame. This is the reason you can't build/move anything under a shield while the game isn't paused. As it happens, Constructors use GetCellOccupiedCount to ensure that you can't build structures that overlap. So in this case:

Code Select Expand


X--X--X
-BBBBB-
-BBBBB-
XBBBBBX
-BBBBB-
-BBBBB-
X--X--X


if there is a sanctuary shield covering any of the X-cells, you'll have to disable it temporarily in order to build the Dark Beam. I've since fixed this, but due to technical limitations and a touch of laziness I would have to remake the entire map again from scratch.

Also, 15 minutes?! Impressive.

Congratulations planetfall, I hope this series can continue with equally awesome maps.

Believe me it will.

[RrR]

Spoiler

Build lots of beams. Put some on pz others along the top edge. Some will get toasted occasionally. Just rebuild.

[close]

Spoiler

You only need two or three shields to block most of the damage from the dark beam - move them to pz as required - upgrade move speed and they will get there in time (at least if there is only one dark beam)

[close]

Spoiler

Freeze drone is very powerful

[close]

Spoiler

Move fast to nullify one of the enemy constructors before it builds a dark beam, and the other before it has chance to build a second dark beam

[close]

Tried building a pz under my dark beam. Missed.

[Jamz]

So I've been away for a while although I checked the forums now and then. And now I've come across this so it's time to get back in the action.
Haven't looked at any of the hints and I will try my best to beat it without doing so.

I'll probably be playing this map first and then look out for other good CRPL maps. Me likes some good CRPL.

[ChaosMaster130]

Whew. Now that was a hard map. So IMO It was worth every day you spent making it planetfall.

Just managed to get my time under a hour as well.

Spoiler

I did admittedly need to use the spoilers in this topic to win though, as I seriously never thought of rushing that middle constructor with a spare CN on my own , among the other tips.

[close]

So yeah excellent map planetfall, can't wait to see what you make next.

P.S. Seeing only 3 people have beat the map(or at least submitted their score) when I want to submit my score was pretty  8) as well.

[Jamz]

That was most certainly hard.

Took me a good number of retries until I decided to spend about a good half hour to just try and determine the PERFECT start. Once I got that start, I knew I had what I needed to both survive and proceed at good pace.
I absolutely cracked up when I read the description for building a dark beam. I was like "whaaaaaaaat!!!" You really didn't kid around when you said it was going to be expensive.
Unfortunately, I did have to come back to this topic to have a look at the hints because I couldn't figure out why the Dark Beam wasn't being made. Then realised there was a bug. But hey, at least you know about it.
One other thing which did slightly confuse me early on was that I didn't quite know how to use the Sanctuary Shield to protect against the Enemy Dark Beams. I thought I could just line them up along the top of the map and that would protect everything below. But I was wrong and then it occurred to me that it's shooting over the shield. And even then, once I realised that, it again took me a while to figure out exactly how it operated. Thank goodness I was saving and didn't have to keep restarting the entire map to figure it out.

A couple of things I did during the battle

Spoiler

With the hack laser, I actually went for the Runner Spawner with Flamethrower. Thing about the Forge was that there was still another one, albeit that one would operate at a slower rate. I decided to go and neutralise something that would be gone for good and since there was only one Flamethrower Runner Spawner, I went for that so that no more could be made during the duration of the battle.

[close]

Spoiler

As it has been suggested above, I also got that first enemy constructor neutralised ASAP and so I only had 1 orbital laser being spawned out. In fact, there were a fair number of things I neutralised in the first few minutes. When I was searching for that perfect start, I realised I could actually safely drop a Command Node to the right of that PZ reactor and terp without being attacked by the flamethrower. I used that spot to help me neutralise some things to the east and to the west of it

[close]

Although I enjoyed this map, I think this map really took hard to the next level. All of your maps tend to be hard but I kinda thought this was overkill. It was like there was no space to breathe, that's how difficult it was. I'm not sure who your target audience is. If it is just for hardcore players then fair enough. Maybe if you toned down on the difficulty you could get many more people playing it.
You could make an easy version of your map. Although I'm not a great fan of easy version and hard version maps, I think with yours it would be ok. You clearly spent a lot of time on this and the rest of the community will get to enjoy a map that's vastly different from many others. Up to you.


Anyway, thanks planetfall for this great map. Glad to see you haven't given up on the series.

[planetfall]

One other thing which did slightly confuse me early on was that I didn't quite know how to use the Sanctuary Shield to protect against the Enemy Dark Beams. I thought I could just line them up along the top of the map and that would protect everything below. But I was wrong and then it occurred to me that it's shooting over the shield. And even then, once I realised that, it again took me a while to figure out exactly how it operated. Thank goodness I was saving and didn't have to keep restarting the entire map to figure it out.

The perspective in CW is very wonky, but this map takes it to a new level I think. Especially with my tendency to not have flying things offset from their true location and have shadows -- it's inconsistent with the way the sprites are drawn and it's super annoying to deal with things riding on things. Yes I could have made the beams float in front of the places they're going to attack, but I don't like obscuring the battlefield. In any case, I should have been a little more clear about this.

A couple of things I did during the battle

Spoiler

With the hack laser, I actually went for the Runner Spawner with Flamethrower. Thing about the Forge was that there was still another one, albeit that one would operate at a slower rate. I decided to go and neutralise something that would be gone for good and since there was only one Flamethrower Runner Spawner, I went for that so that no more could be made during the duration of the battle.

[close]

From this map forward, runner shields will slowly disintegrate while the runner isn't on digitalis. So you can cut the digitalis with berthas and strafers and/or temporarily stun it with freeze drones, and all of the digitalis will wither and all of the runners will die automatically. Anyway, basically everything you can destroy with the hack confers some kind of subtle or not-so-subtle advantage, so depending on play styles and the specific game situation there aren't really any bad choices (except the left emitters or a corrupted totem. Even the flamethrowers can be a huge hindrance and slowdown.)

Although I enjoyed this map, I think this map really took hard to the next level. All of your maps tend to be hard but I kinda thought this was overkill. It was like there was no space to breathe, that's how difficult it was. I'm not sure who your target audience is. If it is just for hardcore players then fair enough. Maybe if you toned down on the difficulty you could get many more people playing it.

Keep in mind - this is supposed to be a boss map in an already relatively hard series.

You could make an easy version of your map. Although I'm not a great fan of easy version and hard version maps, I think with yours it would be ok. You clearly spent a lot of time on this and the rest of the community will get to enjoy a map that's vastly different from many others. Up to you.

I might, but I want to get the next map done first, which will take a while since all my scripts are rather terrible and need optimizing.

Anyway, thanks planetfall for this great map. Glad to see you haven't given up on the series.

You're very welcome!

[Jamz]

Keep in mind - this is supposed to be a boss map in an already relatively hard series.

Oh yeah, now I remember you mentioned way back then that a boss map was round the corner.
And I obviously didn't see the #Boss tag.

derp.

[D0m0nik]

Wow, what a map. After 4 hours of solid action I had progressed by 10 mins! This map has taken me a week to finish and what makes it a great map is that you know from the first attempt that it is possible. I gave up a few times determined not to come back but then I would find myself thinking about it and before I new it I was trying again!

Could not have done it without the spoilers though, thanks for the help!

My tips, in addition to the rest:

Spoiler

As mentioned use the third base to land next to the right hand power zone and then use two blasters and a terp to get in on the middle emitter and take the first area (the small canyon of emitters) quickly

[close]

Spoiler

I built a sanctuary shield early and put it on the right hand power zone next to your 3rd base and used the cover to take out the flames.

[close]

Spoiler

Sanctuary Shields are everything in this map. Don't put them on PZ as they cannot withstand a beam across the full width unless you are very well upgraded. Power is not actually a major issue on this map, keep Shields small and builds loads!

[close]

Spoiler

The early barrage of rockets is pretty scary, again go for quantity of Beam with a couple on PZs.

[close]

Love all your maps!

Dp

[Riskbreaker]

i'm loving this campaign...getting massively wrecked in this stage haha

still, its so awesome, the challenge, all the things happening, increasing threat, surprises

this is such a gem