Impossible Code Maps

[Kithros]

That map very heavily favours conversion bombs - I built dozens of conversion bombs and mass shields to get more room for the dark beam.I probably shouldn't have dug next to the surface emitter, I was hoping the conversion bombs hitting there would be more effective - though it might have helped more than I realized by making sure the density above me wasn't as much so I'm undecided on that.

Could you, in the interests of educating us all (me, specifically) take a full-motion (not accelerated) video of the first 60 seconds or so of this map? I'd love to see your strategy, since everything I tried fails in the first 20 seconds. I can't get enough shields up to get to the red gem (I've discounted going after the white or green, since that might take too much resources and create another weak point in my planned hideout).

The sucky part is that the medium is probably harder, since one has to contend with drones from the outset as well. And on easy it's barely worth bothering.

My videos at normal speed don't seem to work well, but I pretty much built 4 shields before anything else to buy time, then after picking up the red gem completely shielded myself in. In this picture I deactivated all the shields after the gem at 4/5 packets, and then activated them after getting -20% unit cost to save some energy (if you don't time everything meticulously the closest 1-2 shields might not be able to do this and you might have to build them before getting -20% unit cost)

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[Grauniad]

Impressive. Thanks. I guess I'm going to have to get used to a deficiency in timing that well.

[TonyP2000]

I have a couple, someone try these ones out just to see if they really are impossible.

First we have shoe party after L/H Almost no room to dig, plus two surface emitters.

Secondly, there is: paper ask snow L/H Digging in is not the problem, it is the never ending stream of drones coming from the surface gateway. Even if you do have a foothold, have fun fighting a 113 mil emitter without any experimentals.

  

Edit: Also try out 1890 L/H It only has one surface emitter but not a lot of space to hide. Even if you establish a base. You have 30 seconds before you are bombed with 12 phantoms. Have fun! 

[wlf]

Just smoked Rho Rho Upsilon, please cross out from the list!  Bad time, but just beating the start was the trick.  Took a bunch of tries, but was finally able to get enough energy to run the dark beam constantly...

[Lord_Farin]

Apparently, I already did so saturday... see quote Nonetheless, it needs to be crossed out. Good job on beating it  

I have just beaten Rho Rho Upsilon Large/High which was reported beatable earlier on.

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I started by picking up the gems and digging in as follows:

Note the blasters taking care of the drones.

Then it was kind of a rush to finish the dark beam before the big drones came out (16 HP-ish on the left centre)
but I managed to:


From there it was tedious and straightforward

EDIT: paper ask snow L/H is possible:

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Just grab the white gem (ignore the three hits on LS you probably get) and then move to the right, build shields, blasters and start building up (1G down means digging in LS isn't required). Straightforward from there.

EDIT 2: And I have finished it... Man a 100M emitter building up for 10 minutes, yielding a chamber of 50M density creeper is tough to beat without experimentals.

[wlf]

Yeah, I saw your score after I posted mine.  I did it a bit different, shot the beam to a mirror up to the roof and kept the ship above ground for more energy opportunity...

[Lord_Farin]

I announce to be beating 1890 L/H as well.
It was considerably hard, I had to take over the top right chamber with a conv bomb (had to be done fast as digging LS in was impossible), and consequently build energy generation. I then could pulse a dark beam to protect myself, from there I am beating it now.

EDIT: Done. That was really tedious... Clocking in at over 50 minutes it is by far the longest CW2 map I have ever played.

[deathsandwich]

Just to confirm 1890. I started in the same way:

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I tried using as many conversion bombs after that as I could as an experiment. They can help quite a lot with most of the emitters on this map. I used them on every emitter except one!
It took me 19:10 which is pretty fast for me. 

[cclloyd9785]

door bread help Large/High

Easy to dig into with shields, but I just couldnt get past the 2nd pool of creeper that was 25+M thick.  Only tried once though.

[deathsandwich]

door bread help is not too bad if you attack the second pool from the far left side. Use plenty of launchers to hold the creeper back, and blasters to take out the drones. Repulsors are extremely effective too, but most of the work can be done by gravity on this map. I tried, and could definitely take out both the left gateway and emitter in the second pool. I didn't finish it but I'm sure it is possible. Just lots of fire power needed. 

rain here jump L/H

Another experimentals 0g map, this one has a 11,7M surface emitter, and a hideously thin layer of terrain with a chamber and another 11,8M below.

It would take a ninja LS to be able to dig underneath this one. Any hints on beating it?


Screenshot has the creeper bubble status after 11s of gameplay. Did not move LS or take any actions.

Also, I am very happy to announce that rain here jump L/H is actually possible!!!  It was so hard I am inclined to keep the exact solution to myself and see if someone else can do the map first. I'll tell you how if you really want to know... I posted a time if you don't believe me. Woo! 

[TonyP2000]

I announce to be beating 1890 L/H as well.
It was considerably hard, I had to take over the top right chamber with a conv bomb (had to be done fast as digging LS in was impossible), and consequently build energy generation. I then could pulse a dark beam to protect myself, from there I am beating it now.

EDIT: Done. That was really tedious... Clocking in at over 50 minutes it is by far the longest CW2 map I have ever played.

Well played Lord_Farin, well played indeed...

[Kithros]

door bread help is not too bad if you attack the second pool from the far left side. Use plenty of launchers to hold the creeper back, and blasters to take out the drones. Repulsors are extremely effective too, but most of the work can be done by gravity on this map. I tried, and could definitely take out both the left gateway and emitter in the second pool. I didn't finish it but I'm sure it is possible. Just lots of fire power needed. 

rain here jump L/H

Another experimentals 0g map, this one has a 11,7M surface emitter, and a hideously thin layer of terrain with a chamber and another 11,8M below.

It would take a ninja LS to be able to dig underneath this one. Any hints on beating it?


Screenshot has the creeper bubble status after 11s of gameplay. Did not move LS or take any actions.

Also, I am very happy to announce that rain here jump L/H is actually possible!!!  It was so hard I am inclined to keep the exact solution to myself and see if someone else can do the map first. I'll tell you how if you really want to know... I posted a time if you don't believe me. Woo! 

Requires a bit of precise timing at the beginning (and flying LS back and forth through shields to keep sending packets), but after this point it should be pretty straightforward as you can just keep digging down and building more shields.

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[Lord_Farin]

Well played Lord_Farin, well played indeed...

Thanks. Also, Mare, could you please update the list? We have been working hard  

EDIT: I am almost certain 9511 L/H is possible. However, the timing is so tight I can't finish some shields until the shield before them has 0.5 health left... That IS close. But the key is:

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You can get shields up to seal the chamber, then grab the green gem. Careful timing remains required (I even had to plan the LS trajectory meticulously).

[deathsandwich]

door bread help is not too bad if you attack the second pool from the far left side. Use plenty of launchers to hold the creeper back, and blasters to take out the drones. Repulsors are extremely effective too, but most of the work can be done by gravity on this map. I tried, and could definitely take out both the left gateway and emitter in the second pool. I didn't finish it but I'm sure it is possible. Just lots of fire power needed. 

rain here jump L/H

Another experimentals 0g map, this one has a 11,7M surface emitter, and a hideously thin layer of terrain with a chamber and another 11,8M below.

It would take a ninja LS to be able to dig underneath this one. Any hints on beating it?


Screenshot has the creeper bubble status after 11s of gameplay. Did not move LS or take any actions.

Also, I am very happy to announce that rain here jump L/H is actually possible!!!  It was so hard I am inclined to keep the exact solution to myself and see if someone else can do the map first. I'll tell you how if you really want to know... I posted a time if you don't believe me. Woo! 

Requires a bit of precise timing at the beginning (and flying LS back and forth through shields to keep sending packets), but after this point it should be pretty straightforward as you can just keep digging down and building more shields.

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I'm not enitirely convinced you survived that.  Could you show me what happened in the next couple of minutes? Was your shot just loaded ("incoming phantoms")? Your going to need at least 36 energy to dig down to another level and then 20 energy to defend your position, which I'm guessing your going to need to because the shield on the far right is going to go pretty soon after that. Then you will be struggling to dig much further, and it will take a while to reach the red crystal.

You might have survived, and sorry if I'm wrong. It is basically like that, but I am suspicious that right hand shield would cause you to fail, because my build didn't require it. Admittedly, I forgot to use the tech so there would be a little more flexibility than I realised, but not a lot!

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[Kithros]

I just dug down, took the red gem, built up reactors and shields as necessary. I built 2 conversion bombs to send up and rebuild shields (only 1 of them was necessary however, I had lots of shields leftover when my dark beam was running) In the first screenshot I already had 100 crystals saved up, and an easy red gem I could pick up, so I wasn't really short on energy (and there are no phantoms at all in the map)

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EDIT: Something worth mentioning, is that  even if you plan on falling back, it can still easily be  worth building reactors even though they will be destroyed - with the -20% building cost, reactors take less than 30 seconds to pay for themselves, and even a single layer of shields will last about 40 seconds so if you have extra crystal energy leftover at any point, you almost certainly should be building reactors during that time, even if you plan on sacrificing them later on (the reason I have so much energy at  that point was that I had just picked up the green gem when I took the screenshot - I did start building reactors after that)