Difficulty Curve

[bugbrain_04]

I realize some of the Inception maps are meant to be really hard, but the story campaign in no way prepared me for the slog that has been The Melt. I just can't seem to get close enough to an emitter to take it out, no matter how many ships I throw at it. It just starts spewing particles and overwhelms everything. Without a Hammer, C-Class, or Varro to soak up the damage, it's either back off or get wiped out. Not really sure what to do.

[bugbrain_04]

Maybe I need to figure out a way to hold both islands at the same time before I go after emitters—get the mired islands gobbling up some particles to take off some of the heat. But it seems like as soon as I go after the second, all the particles that have built up there bumrush the first island and take it back from me.

I dunno, something to try. Sounds more accomplishable at this point than overtaking an emitter.

[Tjgalon]

Where is it, you think you start to have trouble, also don't forget you can use tech upgrade rock burn to might help too

[bugbrain_04]

I've had the best luck with the emitter in the bottom left. I can push, bit by bit, feeling like I'm making progress, but then I get within aggro range and just get swarmed and have to retreat all the way back to behind the island.

I did a little bit of rock burning to open up a better hole for my grabber to send the friendly particles through. (Otherwise they'd catch on corners and just cause a traffic jam that never gets through that perimeter of land.) I can't think of what else would be useful to burn, though. I'd either be tearing out cover or eating up my energy production by destroying mired land. Or both. Neither sounds desirable.

[Tjgalon]

Mostly what i did was use the two grabber to push the blue particle to say lower or upper island. rock burn help to move the block a little and I move all my attack ships, more or less to the top or bottom, near the island, once particles are flowing good, I use like 6 omi to take the island, normally they will destory the enemy energy pushing the partlces off it, and hopefully time for you to lock it down better, though once i can cap the energy, i move the particles slightly. So say if you capture top first, i move it so it fire past the capture island to the top, using the 2nd grabber to push it towards the enemy/stunner, and once particles are there, I use 2 lathe to capture it, same time, through the destroyer at the source, to absorb the enemy giving the late time to take it out, report for bottom, and middle is sorta easy after that

[warutel]

Shield yourself with Destroyers and/or use them as "bombs" to buy yourself some seconds. If you do it right, you can take out a lot of particles per ship, plus the resulting explosion will push the rest of the particles around the emitter, buying yourself a couple of seconds.

;)

[Karsten75]

If someone is complaining about the shallow difficulty curve in the story line of Particle Fleet, I'd like to refer then to the outrage elicited by the Farbor level in CW3; Day 13 In CW2; and Corvus in CW1. I suspect Virgil has had enough of people complaining about the built-in levels and prefers that players hone their skills on other people's maps. :)

[Tarmandan]

Farbor sure was hard. But later it became my favourite map in the whole story (Other than Apex:meso. I just love my giant shield dome)

[Tjgalon]

it kinda silly, but i never found though maps to be really that hard at all, lol./

[bugbrain_04]

Thanks for the tips, everybody. Managed to take both islands last night. We'll see if I can hold them. I like the idea of using the grabbers to shunt blue particles around the ouyside of the island to add pressure to the emitter assault. Maybe also use it to shield the assault force from the wayward particles that rush in to defend their emitter. I might lose an island in the process, but taking out an emitter would absolutely be worth it. I can retake the other island afterward.  I'll give it a shot tonight and see what I can do.

Farbor was hard, for sure, but it was also the first mission that, through its difficulty, forced me to abandon my tried-and-"true" tactics and try something new, learning new skills and techniques that helped immensely in the extended missions and player maps. So there was a lot of value in that. (Plus, it was damn satisfying to finally take that map.)

[GoodMorning]

If one strategy could work everywhere, there would be little point using anything else. If your strategy works, there's no point inventing a new one. So harder maps force innovation.

[bugbrain_04]

If one strategy could work everywhere, there would be little point using anything else. If your strategy works, there's no point inventing a new one. So harder maps force innovation.

Exactly.

[bugbrain_04]

Got it! The supporting particles made all the difference. Lost a bit of the southern front, but that was easy to retake. Thanks, folks!

[fractalman]

I solved the melt by microing the start and microing how many lasers were in range of particles once my fleet was ready. It only took me a few tries, IIRC.

[SuperTerminator]

If someone is complaining about the shallow difficulty curve in the story line of Particle Fleet, I'd like to refer then to the outrage elicited by the Farbor level in CW3; Day 13 In CW2; and Corvus in CW1. I suspect Virgil has had enough of people complaining about the built-in levels and prefers that players hone their skills on other people's maps. :)

Oh gosh, day 13... I still haven't bought cw1 though, but farbor wasn't very difficult to me. I've never done the early victory though, but I've always beaten the second stage without stress.