Custom Map #353: Reverse Tactics. By: vinster7

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This topic is for discussion of map #353: Reverse Tactics


Author: vinster7
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Now its your turn to lay siege on the particulate! The particles are surrounded and you have to break through their barrier and destroy the heart of the particulate! Its a very easy mission, dont expect any challenge. Its also a good place to test out your own fleets firepower, but there is a fleet of my own if not.

[exy]

Heh.  I don't know that I'd call it a 'very easy mission'.  While it's true that you can more or less take it at your own pace since the particulate is stuck in its loop, and you can afford to spend a long time building up your fleet, I didn't find the core so easy to crack that I could just walk right over it.

AAR

Spoiler

Started in the SE, as expected.  Quickly built some omnis to collect all the pickups, as well as 3 to run along the edges and build all the mines.  Left 2 to collect gems, then recalled the rest to my base.  Spent the first 2 amp gems on Build/Move and MineProd.  Figured I'd try a rush strategy.  The Particle Loop didn't go down as easily as I'd hoped, but I made it work.

Set the HQ on suppressing the SE mine, then proceeded to construct most small ships.  Focused on the Disruptors as early game firepower, and tried to repurpose the grabbers and dischargers as laser frigates.  As those started burning off particulate, I built and charged the Destructor.

I will observe that the enemy mines building instantly was a bit of an inconvenience.  The constant explosions were hiccups in the flow of particulate, causing it to bunch up and threaten my ships in some places.  However, this also made it thinner in others, and I was able to take advantage of this to slip the Destructor and a handful of omnis in to destroy the SE emitter.  No player units survived the encounter.

At this point, I was using almost all available energy and still finding the particulate loop too dense to keep open, so I decided to change tactics.  I sent the grabbers to grab the blue particles and funnel them into the loop (as I should have done from the beginning.  using them as laserers was a mistake, in hindsight).  I built the Excalibur, Bulwark(a key ship, as I discovered.  never underestimate heavy lathes), and also rebuilt the Destructor.  As my Gem Factories spit out gems 3-5, I stuck them on these 3 ships.  Additionally, as I was finding it impossible to keep the any of the inner 8 mines alive, a Heavy Tank to supply my front.

Shortly after, during another gap in the particulate, I sent the Bulwark/Tank/Destructor in to work on the core emitter, having the Bulwark plow through the struc.  In the following engagement, taking heavy fire from all of the enemy mines/doppels/emitters, I sacrificed nearly half of my fleet as bombs to buy the Bulwark enough time to finish the job.  After the emitter went down, things quieted immensely, and I sent in a handful of omnis to help it finish off the progenitor, ending with a time of 6:44.

[close]

I will admit that it's a bit of an annoyance of mine when I can hardly tell what a ship does by looking at its name.  While the names here are enough to get a general idea of what a ship does, it can be a bit opaque when one is faced with an entire page of ships, not knowing what they do.  And while it's possible to tell what components a ship has by observing its range circles or its unbuilt form, it's much harder to guess how many it has.  This goes doubly so for larger ships that take a significant investment/time to build.

However, once built, I do like the majority of your ship designs.  Very practical, if somewhat big and expensive.  Built as workhorses, as opposed to some of the unarmored stick-everything-on-one-ship designs I've seen.  Would be glad to have in my fleets.

Elsewise, I consider it an interesting, if fairly vanilla, take on a siege map.  Good execution, well balanced, but not so much exceptional.

[vinster7]

Thanks for the input, I'll probably make the ship names a bit easier to understand next time. It is my second mission, so im learning as I go.

[GoodMorning]

I will note at this point that any particle loop which particles can make more than one full circuit of is vulnerable to laser erosion. This allowed a complete break in the loop, and (even prior to this) a trivial destruction of an Emitter.