Custom Map #444: Kill It With Fire!. By: planetfall

[Lenori]

Thanks for the tip.  Glad that I saved when gave up, might have a horrible time but I did beat it!!!!!

[RrR]

Great game. First minute is tricky.

Spoiler

Shield drones are annoying. Kill the launcher before it fires.
Freeze drones are massively overpowered - new AoO freeze every ~15 seconds - how can you not win! Freeze drone + PZ bertha = easy.

[close]

[Jamz]

It's been a long-ish while since I've played any CW3.
Anyway, I did this a few days ago but just didn't get round to posting anything. So here my thoughts...

Firstly, I obviously loved the Beam Target function you created. Helped a lot in the initial parts as it meant precious energy was not wasted on firing at stuff it shouldn't fire at.
Secondly, tricky at the beginning, and tricky throughout as it's always been on all your maps so that's something I enjoyed.

Thirdly, still having a big big big problem with those runners. Seriously, they're peeing the hell out of me and I also think they're kinda bugged. I've noticed that for some reason, my snipers only target some runners and not others despite having their shields removed. As I progressed north and eliminated the emitters and flamethrowers, I placed a couple of snipers on high ground PZs so effectively covering like a whole quarter and more of the map. The runners were DEFINITELY in the line of sight of my snipers ie, no higher ground blocking its range. Obviously, I also had a ton of beams activated to take out their shields. Yet my snipers killed some but left others. It was extremely frustrating. I tried moving the sniper and then placing it back, but it still wouldn't take out some of the runners. Then this was the weird part... I put a pulse cannon on a spot that was close to a runner. It didn't fire (and there was no creeper or creeper digitalis around the cannon so it wasn't firing at anything, not even at the runner.) However, when I changed the target priority to "Runner", then it did start shooting at the runner. That was very weird because whether or not I selected Runner as the Target Priority, it should've been shooting at the runner anyway since there was no creeper or creeper digitalis in range. And also why the snipers weren't shooting also eludes me like hell, and even more so, why the snipers shot some down but not others... made it even worse.
Now I only wish I had a save file or something up to that point so that I could upload it and let you have a play around with where I was and see if you could figure something out. But stupidly, I didn't. Problem is though, I think I've noticed this problem in a couple of the previous maps too which is why it's frustrated me previously as well which is why I kinda rambled in my post on your previous map about runners being too overpowered (to which you replied, but I didn't reply back as I got caught up with other things.)
I think what I'll do is I'll try and see if I can replicate this problem and get a save file which I can upload for you to have a look at. I'll also see if I can try and figure out and decipher the problem too. But if you ask me, these problems have started when the shield thing came into play. I didn't have problems with runners before until the shields came into play.

Fourthly, I dont really like how shields activate again automatically after you've removed it without being re-supplied again. To me it just doesn't make sense. I personally feel they should be re-supplied again by a shield drone. That would make more sense. Or alternatively, the shield should start to come back on slowly and initially with low health, not full health so that if a beam does happen to be in range, it should attack the shield and be gone in a millisecond.
One of my biggest problems with this and it's happened once or twice before, is that you've removed the shield from a structure, a nullifier has been laid down, shield keeps coming on and off, you're holding your breath, praying that the shield doesn't come on as the nullifier strikes, but oh noooo, shield has just come back on full flow all of a sudden with the nullifier just starting to fire, beams don't have enough time to attack the shield and now you have to build a nullifier all over again.
More of a nuisance than anything but can be a big problem for anyone who may have a difficult time nullifying a flamethrower (although that wouldn't really be a problem in this map as you could PZ nullify them safely)


Anyway, still enjoyed the map apart from the late nuisances with the runners. Added quite a bit on my time but I dont mind that. As I mentioned above, I'll try this map again and get to a point where you can see what I'm talking about.

[Jamz]

Right! Here we go with a nice little screenie to highlight what's going on here with these runners...



As you can see (perhaps faintly), is I've highlighted my PZ Sniper on Level 10 terrain and 2 runners without shields in a red circle. As you can make out, the sniper has about half full ammo yet is still not firing at the unshielded runners. In fact, it wasn't firing at anything, hence why it was accumulating ammo. There's no way the ammo should be half full cos there are like a dozen runners in range, (all not available in screenshot.) I think the only thing it did fire at before it stopped was the enemy shield drone and I'm now just beginning to wonder whether that's the cause of this bug.


Now, I did say I would upload a save file for you to have a look at but I've just realised that it may not help you now. When I just reloaded my save file right now from that spot, the sniper started to fire and destroy the runners. So it seems that by reloading my file, I got the sniper working again properly and so if I were to upload my savefile, you wouldn't notice anything and everything would seem perfectly normal to you.

What I'm going to do now is allow the game to carry on for a while and see what happens when a shield drone comes along and see if that somehow messes the sniper again. I'll post again soon enough if I notice anything.

[tornado]

gooot news
i can now muck with cprl to my hearts content
mwhahahahahahahahahahaha

[Jamz]

JUST QUOTING MY ABOVE POST.

Spoiler

Right! Here we go with a nice little screenie to highlight what's going on here with these runners...



As you can see (perhaps faintly), is I've highlighted my PZ Sniper on Level 10 terrain and 2 runners without shields in a red circle. As you can make out, the sniper has about half full ammo yet is still not firing at the unshielded runners. In fact, it wasn't firing at anything, hence why it was accumulating ammo. There's no way the ammo should be half full cos there are like a dozen runners in range, (all not available in screenshot.) I think the only thing it did fire at before it stopped was the enemy shield drone and I'm now just beginning to wonder whether that's the cause of this bug.


Now, I did say I would upload a save file for you to have a look at but I've just realised that it may not help you now. When I just reloaded my save file right now from that spot, the sniper started to fire and destroy the runners. So it seems that by reloading my file, I got the sniper working again properly and so if I were to upload my savefile, you wouldn't notice anything and everything would seem perfectly normal to you.

What I'm going to do now is allow the game to carry on for a while and see what happens when a shield drone comes along and see if that somehow messes the sniper again. I'll post again soon enough if I notice anything.

[close]

Ok, I dont know why but for some reason the sniper seems to be working absolutely perfect now. The shield drone isn't messing it up. I dont know why but merely reloading the map has solved the problem. I've let it run for 5 minutes and now it's firing properly.

I'm not sure why no one else hasn't reported this yet. It's possible that reloading the map for whatever reason happens to fix it so perhaps everyone else whose played your maps have been reloading their maps at some point? I'd advise you try getting to that position I did without reloading the map at all as I did on both my runs and see if you get in to that same problem as I did on both my runs until I reloaded it.

[Jamz]

Oh and also, if there was one good thing about this whole ordeal is that at least I beat my score by about 3.5-4 mins. :D

[planetfall]

Runner shields are basically bugged. I've fixed them since this map... I still think you can kill the glitch-runners with strafers, though, if reloading is too annoying.