Weekly 5-Map Tournament - Dragonlance - Closing 2012-04-23

[Wheatmidge]

Since last week was forgotten realms this week shall be Dragonlance!

A few useful links:
All Tournaments
Code Map Scoreboard
Tournament Score Tool

Theme:
The Dragonlance series of books

Dragons of Autumn Twilight Large/high
Dragons of Winter Night Medium/medium
Dragons of Spring Dawning Small/low
Dragons of Summer Flame Small/high
Dragons of the Hourglass Mage Medium/high


Cut-off time:
Forum Time:2012-04-23 00:00 ( = 2012-04-15 23:59:60 )

I'm still lacking the score recorder program and would really appreciate it if someone else could post the scores for me.

[bram]

This is the first time I'm trying a code map tournement. But is it me, or is Dragons of Autumn Twilight very hard or not doable to beat (with the 67.000K emitter)? If it is me, I would appriciate an insight in the tactics used to beat it, after the tournement ends ofcourse, for learning.
Thank you in advance,
Bram

[mopa42]

Here's the mission list in a table.


   
   
   
   
   
   

Map Name:	Size:	Complexity:
Dragons of Autumn Twilight	Large	High
Dragons of Winter Night	Medium	Medium
Dragons of Spring Dawning	Small	Low
Dragons of Summer Flame	Small	High
Dragons of the Hourglass Mage	Medium	High

And I agree - the first map is quite hard.

[deety42]

Haven't beat it yet...

[Wheatmidge]

hmmm, I didn't look at the map very closely when selecting. Dragons of Autumn Twilight has a 67 million mini titan halfway down and a 131 million titan emitter 3/4 of the way down. If no one gets it in a few days i'll change the complexity to medium. Though there is enough space that I believe it should be doable with some proper energy management.

edit: Hmmm, I looked again and it only has normal build direction, it will be hard to build enough energy to attack the titan. The largest piece of advice I can give is to not open the chamber until you are ready. make sure you have all your research done and reactors built everywhere you can.

[Katra]

First map defeated.  ;) Definitely an experts only map.

I'm going to hold the screenshots for now; but I'll give a couple of hints.

1. Saving some crystal energy is a must. I was generating and using about 83 energy at the end.
2. Save some AC. I was using 10% bursts on three charged makers with multi select while building the nullifier for the 131M titan.
3. Be patient; large chambers charged by a titan take a long time to drain even when beating on them with an army of launchers. (I've had entire tournaments take less time than this map.)

[deety42]

Congrats on beating it!  I'm at 22 minutes trying to get the first big emitter and just getting swamped with creep every time.  At least your times make me think there's hope if I just keep at it...

[Katra]

You're on track as long as you still have crystal energy.  ;) You can't rush creeper that dense.
(You'll need to fall back two or three layers of shields after opening that mini titan chamber. It takes that long to wear down the pool.)

Once you can advance; combined repulsors and AC will help damp down splashes of creeper.

[Jarin]

Impressive times. o.o; I'm just trying to beat it at all. Just breached the big titan chamber, at the faaaar upper-left corner, hoping to clear the rest of it and isolate the titan. Current time: 64:30. Yeah, I'm gonna be a bit. <.<

Edit: 90 minutes final time, but I beat it. That was all kinds of fun. Thanks for the "continual 10% burst" advice.

[deety42]

Still working on it. May have to start over : (  Using shields as a buffer was a great discovery though. Never done that before.

[bram]

Thanks indeed Katra for the 10% burst advice, I useally go all out, but this works better in this situation.

[Amram]

Any bigger and killing off the titan would be rather.....difficult.  As it is your pushing the limits of your energy production to do it.  Im really not sure where the limit really is for titans with no experimentals.

I took longer than necessary it seems, but was hellbent on not removing a single tile I could otherwise use for a reactor.  Every breach was one tile only.

Sat on 95.1 energy at the end, and had mroe than I needed.  First time I played it, I got suckered by the tiny field in the bottom left, lol.  Overstretched, was holding it all back, didn't realise I had a field helping me hold it back, and when it changed, i lost the entire bottom left, and it gutted my assault as I had no other blasters there to work on it, just launchers.

I opened the final chamber from the very bottom row, made my stand there, with one shield, 3 blasters behind it, and all the launchers I could squeeze in close enough to be useful.  Had to back up about 4 shields, the fourth might not have been necessary, but it was better to be sure and have it than lose blasters and collapse with the chamber still at 30m+, lol.

And yes, i too had to rely on bursting the creeper.  You have enough ore, and relics here that you can reach 345m stored creeper.  So if you still have that by the end, which I did(largest titan i've taken down without experimentals so far, so I wasn't sure how much i'd need), don't be afraid to splurge, I used one in bursts, and in the end completely emptied another one for good measure

[Wheatmidge]

I actually had a harder time with the mini titan than I did with the big one. For the big one I just shot 6 repulsors up the hole and 4 diagonally at the same spot and was able to build the nullifier without even fully draining the pool.
The small one didn't have enough space around it to point enough repulsors. It probably could have went better if I would have used anticreep. I was saving it for the big one and then forgot to use it there too.

[Amram]

Results Per Player

Rank	Name	Dragons of Autumn Twilight	Dragons of Winter Night	Dragons of Spring Dawning	Dragons of Summer Flame	Dragons of the Hourglass Mage	Total Score	Total Time
1	Katra	8601	11018	11608	11901	11486	54614	76:34
2	dt42		11036	11590	12027	10125	44778
3	Bram		10816	11438	10927	9975	43156
4	Wheatmidge	8412		11760	11908	10955	43035
5	Jarin	5298	10550	11605	11446		38899
6	mopa42	8961	11600	11759			32320
7	Amram	8199	11261	11766			31226
8	UoaDeadeye	6493	10213				16706
9	ctuna			11742			11742

* Best Scores In Bold Blue

Scores recorded at 2012-04-18 18:22:41 forum time.

Wheatmidge, better choice for colors?  I agree the goldenrod is hard to see, and I found the two colors for 2nd and 3rd a little hard to tell apart too, so i tried a different color for third.  Oddly enough, grey is darker than darkgrey......


Funnily enough, it was the mini titan that I put down without completely emptying its pool first, just layered repulsors and went for it, lol.  tried a few times on the big guy failed all of them, so loaded a previous save and tried a different approach.  Didn't think of pulsing AC initially though, or I probably would have cut it down in one of the earlier tries.

[Amram]

Results Per Player

Rank	Name	Dragons of Autumn Twilight	Dragons of Winter Night	Dragons of Spring Dawning	Dragons of Summer Flame	Dragons of the Hourglass Mage	Total Score	Total Time
1	Amram	8199	11261	11766	11850	11653	54729	82:11
2	Katra	8601	11018	11608	11901	11486	54614	76:34
3	Wheatmidge	8412	11370	11760	11908	10955	54405	80:31
4	UoDeadeye	6493	10213	11272	11176	8968	48122	186:17
5	dt42		11036	11590	12027	10125	44778
6	Bram		10816	11438	10927	9975	43156
7	Jarin	5298	10550	11605	11446		38899
8	mopa42	8691	11600	11759			32320
9	testicle			11799	11997		23796
10	ctuna			11742	11682		23424
11	inept_celt			11321			11321

* Best Scores In Bold Blue

Scores recorded at 2012-04-20 00:05:46 forum time.