This topic is for discussion of map #1416: PaCursor: VolcaNO
(https://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld4/queryMaps.php?query=thumbnailid&id=1416)
Author: Heritor
Size: 320x200
Okay, so truth be told, this *was* a PAC-Cursor map, but I removed the cursor at the eleventh hour.
Meanwhile, I didn't update the name - but rest assured, the Creeper Cursor is not present.
I keep getting overwhelmed by the autopilot.
Any hints?
There is some cheese where you can turn everthing off before you press play
I've never figured out how to "push" in CW4 non-cursor PAC maps, CW3 PAC had the flow field thing that got powered up by holding totems in mesh and that helped immensely with "pushing" but in CW4 maps people just haven't done that yet, with cursor maps you can push by near physically moving the front with your mouse but without cursor you just have to hope it flows, which means hope a emitter can overpower defenses or try a very risky stash-lure, which probably still wont work because the cannons and sprayers will still stop your wave in it's tracks
The creeper cutoff limit seems too low to actually beat this map without cheese.
Even with cheesing the AI by turning off its ability to send ammo packets, I found that the resting level of creeper, where the emitters turn off is actually below the terrain height where the rift lab, and many of the corner bases are at.
The global creeper height in the valleys at cutoff is 13-14. The 4 corner bases are at 14, 15, 17, and 20(rift lab).
You cannot actually get the creeper level high enough to overcome the ac breeders.
The only method I've found so far was spamming spores/blobs, which wouldn't work against a non crippled AI, as the redon ore is also at a height above the cutoff.
I'm actually really curious as to what the intended method to beat this map is.
I beat this legit...although the completionist in me cried out that I couldn't defeat the anti-creep patch to the west of the volcano - I overtook the south-east one but that little one was just untouchable.
I started out completely ignoring emitters/stashes; just went straight to launchers. I blob'd the M'rifts overtop the volcano and a missile then switched to spores. I aimed the spores separately over the many creep-breeders on the map to get some free creep started.
While the AI busied itself with the creep spreading across the map I focused west; halting the AI's advance to connect to the Anticreep redon patch.
Once I stalled their advance(not stop), I switched to blobs and dropped the ERN's missile southwest. After that I switched back to spore and dropped the ERN's sprayer+refinery, earning even more launchers from this corner.
After that I switched back to stopping the AI's advance to the anticreep redon patch; which it almost reclaimed. If it had; it would have become ... difficult to do anything.
With the redon patch pushed back again; I focused ALL attention on busting down every M'rift to the west. No other unit mattered. This earned me full control of the west.
At that point I had enough launchers to destroy north-east easy. For the life of me; I could NOT overcome the AI's units to advance southeast though...even with 24 launchers. It had a ton of energy and just kept clearing all the landed creep. So I just finished by sending all spores directly onto the Rift Lab.
But it was so frustrating that for most of this late-game fight I couldn't use emitters or stashes. Emitters would not emit creep...and stashes didn't grow.
So really my main complaint here is the map is HEAVILY forcing players into a launcher-only approach...not really letting them use their full creep-arsenal.
Edit: Oh; and the launchers were able to overtake the southeast patch but it took a while. But not the west patch. Why did I even bother? ...maybe it's an addiction. =]
Just bearly did this with maxed out launchers slowly chipping at the base.
It's the emit limit that gets you. The moment you take any position, you quickly hit it and lose ground elsewhere, while the actual hill the base is on is nearly untakable unless you manage to lose the volcano.
I didn't have enough patience (or enough skill) to beat this map legit, but you can...
Spoiler
manuall destroy all units on start
Greetings from The Shire!
That was arduous, boring, and basically impossible.
EXCEEDINGLY disappointed in this map, especially given I was expecting cursor support during the whole thing and becoming more and more frustrated because I couldn't figure out how it had been "tweaked".
This just wasn't at the quality of your previous maps, Heritor.
I really want to like this map; the different areas have thought put into them, and the weaknesses in the corner bases are fun to exploit; it honestly doesn't need the cursor if it's balanced right.
As a balance test, I edited the map to remove the creeper cap, and added an under-construction bertha in each of the four corner bases to counteract the more cheesy high-creeper strategies such as stash-stacking. Seemed to work pretty well; multitasking was possible, and running creeper/mesh/crimson attacks is so much more fluid when the emitters aren't turning off constantly.
This map feels next to impossible, or at least so tediously difficult that it's not worth the time. It definitely feels like a step backwards and absolutely needed to keep the cursor aspect. I think removing that killed what would have otherwise been a good map. Without the cursor and without cheesing it, you hit a stalemate and then get overwhelmed. Hell, even with cheesing it, unless you immediately bombard the rift lab with spores, the AI can still easily recover from you deleting EVERY OTHER STRUCTURE ON THE MAP.
the Autopilot AI is brutal, but it can be distracted - the key to getting into the strongholds is the mesh already in-place leading into each stronghold.
My strategy to start out against the ERN portal on the northwest was to build up some creeper, plonk down a couple of emitters and a crimsonator at the base of the mesh, work on increasing the mesh in the base once the creeper's flowed in, and use the remaining erns to wear out the missile launcher until you can take it out, then put an emitter + crimsonator combo inside as soon as there's enough creeper.
Once you've got that, you can then use pretty much the same method against the Rocket and Factory areas, then surround the main base with spores/blobs and wear it down (since the AI will have most likely built a factory inside after you destroy it).
Creep cutoff a bit too low sadly, otherwise even if hard it's a good map, maybe just adjust cutoff and reupload?
Great map dude I was able to finish it legit with the help of 14+ blobs wrecking lab at once. Maybe next time not so much of a emitter limit 3.5 is a bit little on this size of a map.
Honestly, Props to QOPLE for making the AI. It's really good. So good that it's nearly impossible to beat legit. It's kinda taken the fun out of PAC and replaced it with tedium.
Quote from: heritor on April 27, 2021, 05:00:19 AM
the Autopilot AI is brutal, but it can be distracted - the key to getting into the strongholds is the mesh already in-place leading into each stronghold.
My strategy to start out against the ERN portal on the northwest was to build up some creeper, plonk down a couple of emitters and a crimsonator at the base of the mesh, work on increasing the mesh in the base once the creeper's flowed in, and use the remaining erns to wear out the missile launcher until you can take it out, then put an emitter + crimsonator combo inside as soon as there's enough creeper.
Once you've got that, you can then use pretty much the same method against the Rocket and Factory areas, then surround the main base with spores/blobs and wear it down (since the AI will have most likely built a factory inside after you destroy it).
You've got a lot of people saying that the map was terrible. Defending it by saying "'Well, this is how I did it" isn't really the right path here. Listening to suggestions to make the map more tolerable for people who AREN'T THE DEVELOPER WITH ENCYCLOPEDIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE BUILD, and taking their suggestions is the path you should take.
Quote from: GadgetBoy on April 29, 2021, 03:34:39 PM
Quote from: heritor on April 27, 2021, 05:00:19 AM
the Autopilot AI is brutal, but it can be distracted - the key to getting into the strongholds is the mesh already in-place leading into each stronghold.
My strategy to start out against the ERN portal on the northwest was to build up some creeper, plonk down a couple of emitters and a crimsonator at the base of the mesh, work on increasing the mesh in the base once the creeper's flowed in, and use the remaining erns to wear out the missile launcher until you can take it out, then put an emitter + crimsonator combo inside as soon as there's enough creeper.
Once you've got that, you can then use pretty much the same method against the Rocket and Factory areas, then surround the main base with spores/blobs and wear it down (since the AI will have most likely built a factory inside after you destroy it).
You've got a lot of people saying that the map was terrible. Defending it by saying "'Well, this is how I did it" isn't really the right path here. Listening to suggestions to make the map more tolerable for people who AREN'T THE DEVELOPER WITH ENCYCLOPEDIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE BUILD, and taking their suggestions is the path you should take.
Palpatine213 stated they were curious as to the intended method to beat the map - which I posted.
Whilst I do read and listen to comments, and generally take them on board if I feel they're valid, at its' core when someone creates a map, they do so because it's something they want to play. Nobody is forcing you to play a map you don't like.
I wanted to play this map, so I made this map (although ironically, this is the first map where I made a change from my most preferred style, deactivating the Cursor *because* people were saying PaCursor wasn't as good). I wanted to play PaC with Cursor, so I made those maps. I wanted to play FPS with bridges, so I made those maps. I wanted to see what Sleeper would be like in CW4, so I'm working on that, and if I think of any other concepts I'd like to play that don't exist? I'll make those maps.
I strongly encourage you to create maps that you enjoy - after all, this isn't a job, this is something we all do for fun, and attacking content creators because they don't create something you like isn't the path you should take.
I just don't get it. My launchers keep yeeting its skimmers north before turning, making it waste time heading towards its objective and getting sniped literally outside the map. WHY?! Half of my pushes were stopped because of this issue.
The core problem of all of these maps with Autopilot is literally the lack of control on our end. I have no ability to control the caches to hold and then release when I want it to. I have no ability to coordinate my launchers. The terrain becomes a PAC user's worst nightmare because Creeper is a fluid that doesn't want to go up a hill. Worse yet, each tower takes up a huge amount of flat space, making the terrain issue a double whammy where you can only take a predetermined path that's already lined with guns.
The normal version of PAC towers is good against static enemies, but against a dynamic one like Autopilot, it's setting up users for failure as they fight not only the AI but their own units working against them.
Fun Idea and I found the AI intense and refreshing. Creeper Cap was the only downside. I tried for ten hours to take the map without the Launcher cheese. I was able to take all of the map except the base. The creeper cap prevented an advance to the height of the base. Finally, just switched to mass launchers and ended the game in a couple minutes. I like to end with a dominated map covered in creep and the inability to do this because of an arbitrary cap on creep was disappointing.
I nearly spend 5 full hours on this map... what a slug fest.
I recently was replaying all Cursor maps and this one was one of my unfinished ones, i restarted from scratch.
After about an hour in i kinda got stuck, and i fortunately read about the cheese on these forums for this map.
However i did not wanted to make it to easy on myself.
I could deal with the long term slugfest, but my god, after a while i had isolated the 4 corners and there were 4 smaller islands i couldnt get rid off.
The main problem for me was the amount of teleporters the brutal ai build....
No really, at one point EACH of those 8 outposts had a minimum of 5 to 6 teleporters, it was crazy....
on this image there are 11 teleporters. and this was just 1 small patch of land... (and i had to deal with 7 more patches of land like this ).
(https://i.ibb.co/Lvf75cJ/20220701072947-1.jpg)
I then decided that i deleted all the Extra teleporters the AI build, and left 1 teleporter per outpost... so it was still connected to its main base. but without the crazyness
It was still a long struggle, but this made it a bit more bareable.
Usally i prefer to brute force my way on pac maps with just emitters, normally i prefer to play without launchers and stashes.
but this map was just impossible to do without skimmers/spores/blobs.... (I kinda felt bad everytime i used them, like the Skimmers//Spores/Blobs was the Cheese, while it was not.)