Help on beating ARA.

[gumgajua]

How do I beat ARA I have been trying and trying and trying and I still can't beat it. Can someone give me some tips for that mission. I'm getting very frustrated. Thanks for the wonderful game.

[NoobSauce]

Step 1: Collector web inside the walled off area.  Once Creeper starts knocking at your front door, get a pair of blasters ASAP to hold them off at the semi-bottleneck* -- make sure creeper isn't touching the wall anywhere or it'll get in.

To get the blaster up front, wait for the creeper to erode the first layer of the wall, then build a relay or collector dead center*, inside but touching the top wall.  Build the blasters inside the walled area but fly them up into the creeper.  Make sure they're touching each other or they're gonna have a hard time surviving.  They'll take care of the creeper.

Playtesting shows you don't really need one dead center as long as you have other collectors touching the top wall.  The point is just to keep the Creeper from flowing past the bottleneck canyon thing, which the blasters can easily do as long as they have power and decent coverage.

Step 2: Get your Collectors to the east where the speed powerup is.  Build storage if you ever hit 20/20 (or any other fraction that basically means you're full up).  Once you get the speed powerup, get a blaster to clear out the right side (since that's already near your forward base ) of the pyramid.

You ought to build collectors in any free, well-defended space like the outer bowl.  More energy means getting things done faster.

Step 3: Build a Relay on the right, then hop another relay over to the right (conveniently empty of creeper) section of the pyramid.  If you think you can spare a blaster, then hop one to level 2 of the pyramid to ensure the relay doesn't get blasted.  Build another blaster in your main base, and get collectors over to the pyramid.  Start expanding to the top.

From there, it's a simple matter of getting blasters onto the pyramid to defend the totems while they charge.  Just build Blasters in a safe spot and then fly them into the dangerous spots, and make sure they're able to defend themselves, and you should be fine.  If they seem to always have empty ammo bars despite you having lots of energy, build speed diamonds to make the ammo reach them faster.  9 times out of 10 the ammo's in the network and in transit, but hasn't reached your blaster because it's moving the speed of...   something very slow.

Edit I just discovered: These emitters can be capped like any other. 

[knucracker]

Great point about the speed packets.  Sometimes folks will not realize that the path from the city to the blaster is so long that building speed is necessary to keep the blaster well armed.

[Aurzel]

point of fact: logic dictates that if something is using up energy packets at the same as or faster than odin city is producing them then speed isnt required as there will be a constant supply on the network which building speed will not affect since speed affects how fast the packet gets from odin city to its destination not how fast odin city produces these packets.

[gumgajua]

Erm.. that sound really complicated.

[NoobSauce]

1. let the creeper wear down the wall then push it back.

2. get the speed.

3. attack the pyramid from the right.

[gumgajua]

ahh. So let it wear out the wall completely? then Kick it's ass.

[NoobSauce]

oh god, I meant the top layer of the wall, not the whole thing o_o

You let that thing tear down the whole wall, you're gonna get your ass surrounded.  Just get enough of the wall down so that you can get a pair of blasters into the creeper on the other side of the wall (i.e. preventing the creeper from touching your precious wall any more).

[Aurzel]

if you let it tear the whole wall down make sure you have several blasters waiting on the other side heh