Custom Map #2640: PAC Nexus.. By: Vertu

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This topic is for discussion of map #2640: PAC Nexus.


Author: Vertu
Size: 225x120

[Hatsee]

You can lose units somehow, as in they count towards your total, still exist but you can't target them or destroy them or control them at all.  Even if you select all of that unit type they just don't exist, no idea why.  This is why I gave up this attempt anyway. 

The nukes...  They still nuke you when you destroy them, which means all you can do is push hard to get close and drop 4 anti-nukes near it. 

[Vertu]

You can lose units somehow, as in they count towards your total, still exist but you can't target them or destroy them or control them at all.  Even if you select all of that unit type they just don't exist, no idea why.  This is why I gave up this attempt anyway. 

The nukes...  They still nuke you when you destroy them, which means all you can do is push hard to get close and drop 4 anti-nukes near it.

There are no invisible units I have tested it and have thought it has happened to me but my Power stat was always constant.
If a nuke detonates in altitude, it suffers a damage penalty. Most noticeable when there is some crimson around as it takes very little crimson to survive an altitude detonation. It does like 300 damage on impact but only ~50 if detonated early. Problem is you tend to have around 10-20 Creeper all over the place so it all gets cleaned regardless.

[Yamioni]

Quite a few issues noticed on this map.

You added new units, but don't use A.D.A. to explain what they do. So you have to just stumble around your first attempt figuring them out. Not enjoyable, especially when the TCML takes two minutes to warm up before even doing anything.

The TCML doesn't appear to live up to its name. It's a missile launcher, for sure, but the targets don't appear to be very tactical at all. Mine was firing at a single turret bathed in AC that wasn't even close to my front line, which would quickly get rebuilt and then targeted again. Figuring out optimal placement is a pain when the unit spends its first two minutes doing nothing.

The forge can be deleted, but it was omitted from the unit panel, so you can't replace it.

AntiNUKE is flagged with a lightning bolt. Traditionally this is used for units that consume creep, but do not cost power. The AntiNUKE costs power, and generates missiles without consuming creep.

Over-spending power disables all placed units. A common tactic I use on PAC maps is to pre-place units, wait for them to "activate" by being in deep enough creep, then deleting another unit to turn the new unit on. This tactic is still semi-viable, but just annoying to pull off.

Green walls and the V-Storage units don't appear to take any damage from creep.

Nukes are imbalanced. They appear to take around 30 missiles to destroy. A single AntiNUKE can only generate 10 missiles in the same amount of time it takes to launch another nuke. This means you need to commit 3 energy just to nuke defense. This makes progress really slow.

[Hatsee]

Those ones became unselectable, undeletable, and still used power.  It may be the spot or the fact they got nuked, I don't know.  But I can't do anything to them. 

[Mr$Hyper$]

The moment I get hit by a fighter for 2 minutes I just say no. I'm not dealing with another map that calls down god damn nukes that resets all my progress I'm done with these maps.

[Vertu]

Those ones became unselectable, undeletable, and still used power.  It may be the spot or the fact they got nuked, I don't know.  But I can't do anything to them.

I wish I knew how to debug this but I don't know anywhere in the code that would prevent it. So sadly without additional information I don't know how to replicate it in order to see for myself what went wrong.
I will however, try to look into it anyways because you probably didn't notice too much, but I actually rewritten a good chunk of the code now. Mainly the ERN management part and some things involved in it so I encountered such issues before but fixed them to a port where I didn't encounter them in my 50+ minute run. And it was mainly my unit additions that had this problem, not the original PAC units.

Also I am aware of how you can't plan units, I did it too, but with how I overhauled the scripts, I need a proper disable functionally now. So what I do is just have little plans and try to time my placements after deleting units. It's an unfortunate side effect of adding the new units, code rewriting became necessary but it has made the PAC CPack much more adaptable and modular. I do have some plans to add a proper building system for the units, making "planning" possible again but that's more long term stuff.

[Niflthaena]

Something's destroying LUREs now. About 20 minutes in they started being killed. I suspect it's the heavy fighter, but they die fast enough I can't really tell for sure.

As a result, building up creep is no longer possible. The amount of creep produced is so vastly outweighed by the damage of the enemy fighters, and with LUREs disabled they pound my emitters into the ground.

[Snicker]

Another fun map.  TCML does feel a little underwhelming since it takes 2 minutes to warm up and then only fires once every 30 sec AND cost 3 power. I was able to stagger 30 of them to attack once every second. Since they only attack to nearest thing it hurts to see it shoot a single tower 4-5 times and wasted shoots at a shield. Truthfully i didnt even try the burster since in late game i feel they would be targeted first. But Still  need to try them out.

-Bug I found with stashes (this might be true for some other units too) if you delete them AND if your power is in the red they will not delete, not doing anything, and still use power. You can get the power back if you delete a crimson (or a unit that doesnt get stuck) to get into the positive then delete again.
-I was able to hit the creep spawn limit at 5 or 6min mark. that stopped me from moving after i took the  top shield base.

Pro tip - TCML can shoot down the fighters. The fighters just take a lot of damage and heal slowly.
-you only need 4 anitnukes fully stocked to pop the nuke in the enemy base.
-lures will only work until heavy fighters come OR if you put them close to emitters the ION cannon laser can slightly nuke the ground on them.

[Vertu]

Another fun map.  TCML does feel a little underwhelming since it takes 2 minutes to warm up and then only fires once every 30 sec AND cost 3 power. I was able to stagger 30 of them to attack once every second. Since they only attack to nearest thing it hurts to see it shoot a single tower 4-5 times and wasted shoots at a shield. Truthfully i didnt even try the burster since in late game i feel they would be targeted first. But Still  need to try them out.

-Bug I found with stashes (this might be true for some other units too) if you delete them AND if your power is in the red they will not delete, not doing anything, and still use power. You can get the power back if you delete a crimson (or a unit that doesnt get stuck) to get into the positive then delete again.
-I was able to hit the creep spawn limit at 5 or 6min mark. that stopped me from moving after i took the  top shield base.

Pro tip - TCML can shoot down the fighters. The fighters just take a lot of damage and heal slowly.
-you only need 4 anitnukes fully stocked to pop the nuke in the enemy base.
-lures will only work until heavy fighters come OR if you put them close to emitters the ION cannon laser can slightly nuke the ground on them.

Thank you for the insights.
The TCML was tricky to initially balance. Make it have specific targeting?- Might cause extreme sequence breaking without making the launcher useless. What if you get a ton of them (I forgot they don't find targets after launching unlike a recent missile I made, will fix that.)? Could a bunch be broken in strength?- So make them 3 power so you need to invest a lot to get that theoretical strength (which was not the case). All while trying to make the basic launcher still viable. 3 launchers vs 1 TCML. Many thoughts, many questions.

I will look into the bug with being unable to destroy PAC units (aka they soft lock) thanks to your additional information.

[Vertu]

Que 2 seconds latter and I find that in the Stash's code, I didn't remove the old return call for when you are at a power deficit. During the overhaul I made this small bit of code and quickly realized it will soft lock the units and started removing them. Apparently during the fuss (which was mostly me panicking when a seemingly impossible problem appeared, thanks to trauma from dealing with quantum mechanics.. like the SML..) I didn't remove this in the Stash code so when you have a power deficit it would soft lock. All I had to do was remove 3 lines and all is well.

Meanwhile I also fixed the satellite VAU from hard locking itself in PAC mode. This was due to unupdated code from looong ago that I didn't update to the unit after copy and pasting from another VAU into it. Whoops.

[BrokenLifeCycle]

What the heck kind of AA does this thing have? I gave it a bombardment of at least 36 launchers simultaneously letting loose and it got shut down hard. I attempted a blob swarm. The terrain screwed me over as it had to go over a steep hill, effectively ceasing any horizontal motion for a long while to be picked off.

I had to basically creep my emitter bases forward with fields and crimson until I finally broke the choke point --- after waiting for all of the fighters to eff off to reload or shoot something inconsequential, I mean. At the end of the level, I had accumulated over 150 power just to complete the level.

[Vertu]

Oh wait I literally JUST posted on another map and thought it was this one. Whoops. Yeah I tagged this with a Brutal Last stand for a reason. I developed an Armored lure so you don't need to rely on the Reactor Fighters loly gaging off somewhere else that's not the front line in my next map.

[SteveCarlo]

it's just a brutal slug fest to the point of being no fun

[ChaosMaster130]

Year late to the party for this map, But having read the posts here before playing the map myself.
I cheesed the map by building up enough power to send 25+ blobs from the bottom of the map to slowly snipe the Rift lab.

Worked for me :D