Weekly 5-Map Tournament – Chill Out, Bro - closing 02 Mar 2013

[Helper]

LoFa takes the overall lead, but mopa-man grabs another Gold. Helpless is trying, but can't help himself yet.
Deety & Shawn are bumping heads, with GUI playing catchup.

inept_celt is changing his first name to 'ept' and we have some new players jumping in with both feet.

So far, a fine week!

[UpperKEES]

Heheh! ;D Having our own CW2 reporter makes the tournaments fun for the non-participating spectators as well.

[Helper]

Mr. UpperKEES...this reporter has a question for you sir...

Are you ever going to do another CW2 game or are you focused on future versions?

[UpperKEES]

[off topic]

Currently I'm involved with CW3 beta testing (besides other things), but I'm still planning to release a new version of Liberation Pinball (medium difficulty) and a second (puzzle) map that I have sitting on my hard disk for more than a year (95% finished).

I just need 1 full day of spare time to make sure they are perfect, which should be before the release of CW3.

[on topic]

[Helper]

(Pesky reporters...always asking that off-topic stuff. They're out of control, I tell ya!...Thanks for the update.)

I'm still beating on "Wrapped around the axle.", but can't get anywhere near those 10:30 times. I might have to start from scratch and try something radical.

[Helper]

The battle for first place is fairly close...film at 11.

Friday - 13 Players, 63 Scores

Results Per Player


   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Rank	Name	It's only a game	Lighten up!	Give it a rest!	Wrapped around the axle.	Hit the road Jack	Total Score	Total Time
1	Lord_Farin	11812	12752	12226	10708	12427	59925	26:08
2	mopa42	11811	12829	12240	10706	12326	59912	26:17
3	Helper	11748	12810	12277	10621	12310	59766	27:23
4	dt42	11754	12505	12102	10043	12064	58468	37:45
5	asmussen	11758	12656	11994	9876	12001	58285	39:36
6	Gu250	11599	12446	12068	9730	11899	57742	43:55
7	Dagobert	11734	12592	11851	9204	11916	57297	49:26
8	inept_celt	11517	12403	11578	8756	11186	55440	66:35
9	Ronini	11559	12187	11182	9168	10915	55011	68:30
10	Cinth	11704	12281	11223	8263	11283	54754	75:43
11	MizInIA	11414	12066	10953	8287	10996	53716	83:27
12	teknotiss	10379	12107	11242		11124	44852
13	Iqbal	11680	12230	11831			35741

Scores recorded at 2013-03-01 17:16:32 forum time.

[Cinth]

You guys up top are crazy good.  I've tried everything I could think of to cut my times and I can't come close on most of these boards.

There has to be some game play elements I'm missing or something..

[Helper]

Cinth -
Did you see this post by the Deetster?

The tips that helped me the most are 1) never let your energy consumption exceed production; 2) build up a lot before tackling creep and emitters.  I'd add to that, 3) look for any emitters you can take out as soon as you get your first gem. 

Also - in the very short games, you often do not need to build any Reactors or Tech Domes - just take the freebies you can dig for and charge the Emitters like crazy.

[Cinth]

Yeah, I got that.  Used that to cut my total time from 112 to 75.  I'm still pretty far off some of the best times.  The way you guys approach these maps is more or less where I'm losing time too.

I was pretty casual with the CW games, just playing for completion, not for top scores.  Now that I've taken an interest in participating here, I'd like to be in the neighborhood with my times.

[Helper]

OK - understood.
I didn't grab any screenshots yet this week, but will be playing a couple of these again and try to remember.
Seeing other player's screenshots help me see how they're attacking.

Maybe some of the other players have some hints they can post.

[Kithros]

Cinth -
Did you see this post by the Deetster?

The tips that helped me the most are 1) never let your energy consumption exceed production; 2) build up a lot before tackling creep and emitters.  I'd add to that, 3) look for any emitters you can take out as soon as you get your first gem.  

Also - in the very short games, you often do not need to build any Reactors or Tech Domes - just take the freebies you can dig for and charge the Emitters like crazy.

I would like to point out that unless it's *REALLY* short (or if they blatantly give you nigh infinite energy), reactors will still be worth building. With no tech upgrades etc. a reactor only takes ~33 seconds to pay for itself - with full tech upgrades this number decreases to ~18 seconds. Typically I would guess unless the map will end in roughly 50 seconds, you're probably still better off building reactors (though there are of course exceptions to this). As for tech domes, those are a lot more complicated to calculate with and realistically can only be done by intuition.

The basic rules that should usually be used:
Use all of your energy, but don't have an energy deficit (there is a very small exception in that deficits can be useful if they only last for 0.5 seconds at the most)
Wait as long as possible before building your weapons. Your weapons should be firing as soon as they are built (again, some rare exceptions in that you might want to wait before opening a chamber to build up more weapons - but even then you should usually attack the chamber early and use shields to hold off the creeper while waiting for the rest of the weapons to finish building).

'as long as possible' in this sense means wait until you either have as much energy as you want, or if you need to defend some position - either way the weapons should be attacking as soon as they are built, and if they are ever not firing they should be moving. As mentioned earlier, unless you expect the map to be finishable in about the next minute, or if you simply don't have enough space to use more weapons (ie. couldn't actually use more energy even if you produced more), you should still be continuing to build reactors before attacking.

In code maps, you should usually only build tech domes if you have enough energy production that you can't continue to build reactors (ie. you would need to build reactors faster than you are able to dig through terrain). There are exceptions to this in difficult maps, but for most code maps this holds roughly true.

In large maps, you usually want to start digging down to the bottom of the map ASAP - don't worry about attacking the other chambers, just focus on digging down and building up energy, and then once you're at the bottom attack all the chambers simultaneously (you should have enough energy for this if you built lots of reactors and use the appropriate weapons). In some instances with big chambers you may want to attack the chamber from multiple sides at the same time (this is better than attacking from one side because weapons don't waste as much time moving - but only if you have enough energy to support it).

[Grauniad]

Someone should put that in the KC wiki  for CW2 gameplay. :)

[Cinth]

That's a lot of good stuff, thanks :)

Just as an example of how I approached one of this weeks maps, Hit the road...

Grab the green gem and kill the first emitter with that energy. Drop reactors across the surface and dig up the RWB gems.
Dig out right on top of the upper right emitter and drop 3 blasters in the tunnel and have one blaster working on the left side creeper.  When the left blasters are ready breech that chamber and as soon as I have enough of an opening kill the emitter.
Fill in dug out area with reactors and place 2 more blasters left.  Dig into the center chamber from the right (grab green gem) and clear enough creeper to kill that emitter.  While that happens try to breech the next chamber on the left.  From there I try to get 2 makers pushing AC to help clear up creeper while I dig down and take out the emitters.  I place reactors in the dug out areas. I just work my way down as directly to the emitters as I can.  I use the tech available on the board for fire rate and a range upgrade.

[deety42]

Cinth -
Did you see this post by the Deetster?

LOL...the Deetster...I kinda' like that. 

[Helper]

Hey deety - you and Shawn are running neck and neck in about every game.

That advice from Kithros is like a primer on CW2. I went back at Mission 4 and took almost a minute off my time.