Some of times seem like they were achieved when the game play was quicker. I have no idea how to get 59.5 seconds on the first mission, for example. The best I came up with is to build the omni at max range so it leeches as little unnecessary energy as possible and move it away, have ships prepositioned, but building the lathe and destroyer still takes however long to do.
If indeed certain times are now impossible, can the times be cleared if the timestamp was prior to a balance change?
Otherwise, what black magic was used to achieve these?
It looks like there is no limit to energy in the mission. I build the omni as close as possible to reduce build time and I hover the ships over the energy mine when they are mid build. This does not bring me close to sub 1 minute though.
Don't worry about the top scores too much. Some of the guys are some of our old timers, masters of micro management. I don't believe that things changed enough to make a difference (from beta to 1.0).
Quote from: SnipesMcShoot on September 29, 2016, 08:55:22 PM
Some of times seem like they were achieved when the game play was quicker. I have no idea how to get 59.5 seconds on the first mission, for example. The best I came up with is to build the omni at max range so it leeches as little unnecessary energy as possible and move it away, have ships prepositioned, but building the lathe and destroyer still takes however long to do.
If indeed certain times are now impossible, can the times be cleared if the timestamp was prior to a balance change?
Otherwise, what black magic was used to achieve these?
You remind me of myself, some years back. Or maybe not quite. At least, we have this in common that we both came here asking about how to play faster (I didn't start off by accusing established, well-skilled players of cheating, but I did accuse Virgil of making maps that can't be beat).
Here's a nice timeline of how I started here:
http://knucklecracker.com/forums/index.php?topic=77.msg1006#msg1006
Alwego helped me out, and then I played for a while more, until I came to a map named "Gump" - then I lost it. Just to prove that it cold be done, Alwego then posted a youtube video of him playing Gump in Double-down mode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pdEd-9Bd8g
Then there was a map that was all islands, and I forgot the player who was boss of that one.
Then there are players like Alter Old
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmbTY9LqzlI
So let me tell you that what these players have forgotten, you and I still have to learn when it comes to laying down record times. Truthfully, oftentimes I think some of the high scores are cheats, but not if they are in out beta testers or well-known here. Virgil also has a good record of clearing out early scores that might have been laid down under altered conditions or before changes in game mechanics.
Yes, in a while you will encounter cheat scores - there isn't much we can do about it, except regularly clear out those, but true high scores are oftentimes a thing of wonder that we can merely look at bit not ourselves achieve.
All that said, I think my time on mission 12 was achieved on a previous and easier version of the map. It probably isn't possible any longer.
Quote from: planetfall on September 29, 2016, 10:47:14 PM
All that said, I think my time on mission 12 was achieved on a previous and easier version of the map. It probably isn't possible any longer.
Usually the map GUID changes and that makes it impossible. Game mechanics might change, so if that is the case, I'll apologize, and we should ask Virgil tomorrow to clear out times on a few maps where that might have happened.
I just went at the first mission again after reading this, and was able to perfectly match my previous score, which happens to be literally 1 second off of the top time. (Shame, 'cuz I was hoping to improve on that time) This is how I did it:
Step 1) Remember that this map alone will not pause on new conversations, and that includes the opening text. Press pause the instant you press the start button to avoid accruing time before you can do anything.
Step 2) Nothing special, place the HQ and have it build the energy mine. Pause shortly before completion and use the N key to snag the exact frame that it goes live. Again to avoid building up unwanted nanoseconds.
Step 3) The Omni. Set it to build on the island as close to you as possible to reduce the amount of time it takes the packets to reach you. I once tried to build the omni in space, but it seemed like it didn't properly recognize that said Omni was built properly. Not sure what that's about. Again pause just before completion and find the frame. And once you do, delete the Omni so it takes no excess energy. So far as I know, letting it mire will eat more energy than it can recover (but I don't have the top time, so who knows).
Step 4) The Lathe. Place the command module or whatever it's called as close to the emitter as possible to reduce time. Once it's built, you can move it freely without wasting any time. (Or at least I believe so). This will trigger another energy mine build. I took one run to find a spot where the HQ could start building it the instant it appeared, and moved it there immediately after completing the first energy mine in step 2. But you've got plenty of time to move it, so no need to pinch nanoseconds on that one. The Lathe you're building will not finish in time to assist in building the energy mine, so there's no need to position it in any special way.
Step 5) The Destroyer. Again build it as close as possible to the energy mine. It will be completely useless in the fight though, so just leave it where it is. Just remember to pause and snag the proper frame of it finishing.
Step 6) The Emitter. The game spawns another energy source and an emitter. You can skip the energy mine building to save lots of time. Make sure that the Lathe and HQ are both in range of the emitter (and not the mine, although it might choose to target enemies instead regardless), and just let them kill off the emitter. And here's one last oddity: Once you kill the emitter you win, but the timer doesn't stop counting until you clear away the text that pops up at the end. So one last frame-perfect pause will be needed. That gets me my 1:00.5 time. Though for some reason it reads as 1:00.4 in some places but 5 in others.
So there you have it, now everyone can grab a time equal to the current 2nd and 3rd place. And in the process prove that I don't cheat :P Always a bonus. I don't know how AlterOld beat that by a full second though. I'm very curious what he does differently.
You can build the omni in space. You have to build it slightly off of the energy mine for some reason. I think you can save a few frames by having the unfinished ship hovering over the energy mine also. That may be enough to save a second.
I played around with the Omni and figured that out for myself. After getting that and the rest of my listed strategy perfect, I was able to cut off half a second. The other half a second is completely beyond me, and I don't see any possible way to gain that time. I would love to know what AlterOld did to earn it.
This is just a theory of mine and I have no idea if it works. I think he placed the destroyer between the two energy mines. As soon as the packets from one energy mine touched the destroyer, he began moving the destroyer to the energy mine that was not supplying packets. He is then is able to get energy from two energy mines. I do not know if this would make up for the distance though since the unbuilt destroyer would not be able to reach the energy mine.
This is slower, as the destroyer will request one energy packet (pulse) per frame from the nearest mine. The travel distance is higher if you place it at another mine. While the arrival rate is higher when the packets are arriving from both mines, this is because you have delayed packets from the first mine.
Thanks all for the input.
Karsten75, let me clarify that I wasn't accusing anyone of cheating, only arcane black magic meaning extremely high knowledge of every last game mechanic.
Relli, thanks for the tips, and I have an additional improvement. You can toggle off build on the lathe when it finishes to save energy, since adding engines, lasers, and lathes costs additional energy but isn't needed until the destroyer is finished. But you do need engines to escape the mining radius towards the emitter and allow it to "self build" the lathe without taking more energy from mining stores.
The benchmarks I could achieve:
15.1 omni finishes (directly right of mine, about 1 omni away, and you don't need to pause to start this, you can preplace it during mine construction)
30.4 lathe hull finishes (hover over mine)
33.3 lathe engines finish (hover over mine, build off, head to emitter, build on when out of mine radius)
35.5 mine finishes
50.3 destroyer finishes (hover over mine)
59.9 kill emitter (lasers were off on lathe, but probably has enough energy, can't remember)
Thanks for all the information!
I love discussions like this. learning the little details that a person can use to make their times better.
It reminds me of discussions when I first got really into creeper world (which was number 2 for me). In Creeper World 2 the creeper only moves on every second frame but damages shields every frame, so if you are really really determined to improve a time or complete a extremely hard level you could cycle your shield on and off on each alternating frame and make them last twice as long.
Never underestimate how determined some people are when it comes to perfecting their creeper (or particle) killing ways.
And I think I'm going to have to see how close I can get to those top times now.
I'm stuck at 1:00.2... agh so annoying that i'm so close, yet so far xD
a couple matches later, i have it down to 59.9... doing at half speed instead of normal. maybe changing speed will change frames and time
Changing speed should not affect frames and time. What it will do however is reduce your wated frames when giving orders or when pausing after something is completed. However, as mentioned before, the ultimate way to the best times is pausing before something requires you to take action again and advance frame by frame till the frame you need to take action.
While I don't fully comprehend it yet, I have noticed that there seems to be a distinct difference between advancing with N on 1x speed and half speed. I originally thought the N key was glitching up on me, as sometimes the screen would show no visible changes for 1-6 presses of the button. And by "sometimes", I mean it would do that again after every N key that showed movement. Meanwhile I never got this problem at 1x speed. So there may be something to that. As a guess, perhaps x4 speed would mean that N increases it by 4 frames (or 4x the frames 1x speed does, at least).
As a side note, the whole thing with building the Lathe faster by turning off Build is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that this game gives far too little information about how it works. My Kingdom for numerical stats. Even if it's just Wiki-bound that would be an incredibly large improvement.
When the APIs come out, feel free. CW3 doesn't have them all yet, and some that are there disagree with other pages.
PF seems to use frames differently, but 1x/4x should be the same. .5x might be somewhat altered, but not in terms of logic, only display.