Strategy and gameplay tips and strategies

[pawel345]

I was thinking of making a gameplay guide on the wiki and while i can probably give some good advice but it might be better to compile results form may players. I was thinking of making 3 guides:

A beginners guide which should help a new player to beat all the campaign maps and start DMD and prospector zone

An intermediate guide for players who know how to play, to give them a few tips how to improve their strategies and make first tries at tormented space and speed runs.

An Advanced guide for tips and tricks about speed runs, and efficiency play.

If some people could write here their thought's on the topic and then I will try to compile that was written here into structured guides?

[Mimsy]

This looks like a great idea.

Start with tips on the interface. Then for beginners guide, just give details of what each unit does (e.g. the energy produced by a reactor, which isn't stated in-game) instead of a complete walkthrough. Maybe a tip or two for the harder levels, but for the most part the levels are straightforward. Basically this should be a collection of what you learn from Lia, plus a few important details.

Interface tips:
-Click-drag to build collectors properly spaced in a line.
-Double clicking works to select multiple reactors (and other things?) even though dragging a box doesn't.
-When you have multiple Guppies selected, clicking places a destination for them one at a time.
... probably lots others

For the intermediate guide I'd like to see details of game mechanics and simple strategy.
-How the heck does digitalis work?
-Aether travels to the forge wirelessly so can be collected with guppies or secondary bases.
-Anti-creeper... does what? annihilates with creeper? How much is shot at once? It's repelled by shields I know.
-AC can be absorbed by the same sprayer that's shooting it.
-Terps build from lowest to highest (I think), starting with the closest spot if the heights are the same.
- ^ means if you're building a wall you should mark only the furthest first if blasters are holding back creeper; else the blasters will be blocked and the far side can't be built.
-what's the difference between different sizes of runners?

Then in the advanced guide you explain how people manage those 8-minute times on maps that take me 40.
-...yeah I got nothin' here.

[Measure]

-How the heck does digitalis work?

I think what is going on is that it is a kind of drip-feeder piping. It is higher than any terrain and cannot be blocked or destroyed, though parts of it can be made dormant/inactive.

With a supply of creeper, which in this interpretation it sucks up from underneath itself, it spreads the creeper through its piping faster than creeper can spread normally. At the same time it is dripping creeper out slowly wherever it covers.

Now, i think it might need to reach a certain pressure before it spreads creeper out from itself, but at the same time, it causes damage to structures placed under it, even if there is no apparent spread out from the live creeper in the pipe.

Ok, that's my best guess for now, I'd have to just sit and do nothing on a few maps to see better what is going on.

Then in the advanced guide you explain how people manage those 8-minute times on maps that take me 40.

To me, it is very tedious gameplay, but you have to never waste a single drop of energy, energy being wasted any time your energy storage is full and you don't have energy going out to do something.

Lots of pausing and strategizing, and really only building exactly what is necessary to win a level.

[Katra]

I have a couple tips for the more effective use of snipers. Not sure whether they would go in beginning or intermediate.

1. Snipers are line of sight. Build a neat 3X3 sniper platform with a terp to give yourself a clear line of fire over terrain obstacles.
2. Make your sniper platform on a power zone to make a super sniper that can cover your advance on a wide front.

I have used terps more often to build sniper platforms than for any other purpose.

[Randomgold]

I have a couple tips for the more effective use of snipers. Not sure whether they would go in beginning or intermediate.

1. Snipers are line of sight. Build a neat 3X3 sniper platform with a terp to give yourself a clear line of fire over terrain obstacles.
2. Make your sniper platform on a power zone to make a super sniper that can cover your advance on a wide front.

I have used terps more often to build sniper platforms than for any other purpose.

This tip doesn't just apply to snipers.  It also works for PCs and sprayers, which also fires on line of sight.  The only difference is you can put your sniper 'towers' further back.

[Cavemaniac]

Tip - The range of a Nullifier on a PZ is the same as normal Relay link. To see if a Nullifier will be able to reach it's intended target from PZ created by destroying an enemy, you can use a simple 'ruler'. Select a 'Relay' unit, click and drag from the enemy unit you intend to turn into a PZ towards it's intended target. If the relay range is greater than the distance, your Nullifier will have sufficient range.

[pawel345]

OK so how about something like this:


Beginners Guide

The most important thing in Creeper World is Energy. It's what you use to build and power nearly all of your units. At the beginning of any map the first thing you want to do is to PAUSE and look around for a landing spot. Use all available CN, each produce 1,5 energy so you want to land them all to get an initial boost. Unless the map is made in a way where it's really beneficial to use multiple networks, land all CN together, maintaining multiple networks is a rather hard task. Then (still paused)  you want to lay down collectors to be build, plan as many as possible don't mind that the creeper will probably destroy many of them. Each collector can produce up to 0.2 energy, but as your collectors will overlap a bit that will be slightly less. Now unpause, wait for the landing animation to finish and PAUSE again. DEACTIVATE all but one of the collectors that are connected to your CN as you don't have the resources to build multiple buildings at once. When you finish building this one gradually expand your network, building first 1 then 2 at a time.  By now about 1 min into the game you probably generate enough energy to get by and start building reactors and some weapons to defend yourself. Build 1 or 2 reactors depending on your energy generation. Now start building weapons you need and continue building reactors until you have ~10 of them. That should be enough to power your assaults. Whenever you seem to be  using nearly all generated energy, or intend to make a larger assault or simply have some free energy it's always a good idea to build a couple more reactors.

Overall beginner tips:
-PAUSE a lot. Most of the thing's you do in game you should do while paused. Unpause to see your orders carried out, then PAUSE again.
-SAVE from time to time and whenever you achieve something or plan a larger assault.
-DO NOT OVERBUILD, build things one at a time, don't get your network RED!! If at any time your network gets red PAUSE and see if there is anything you can deactivate to build the other things first.

Structure Overview:

-Collector: Useful to generate some energy at the beginning, and to connect reactors.
-Relay:This is your main building for connecting your network and weapons. Relay connections are longer and packets have x2 speed on them.
-Reactor: This is your main building for generating energy. Each reactor generates 0.5 energy, but they cost 50 packets so don't build many of them at the same time.
Ore mine: Place on ore deposits whenever you can, but not at the very beginning of a map you have better things to waste your energy on.
Siphon: Place on crystals whenever you can as fast as you can.  
TERP: Build those only when you have a lot of energy.
Guppy: Don't build or take off too many at once, as when the landing pad is empty it requests 120 packets which can be a huge strain on your network.

[J]

For the beginners guide, I would change pause a lot to pause every now and then. It is still the beginners guide.
Another beginner hint: pause after the CN's land so you can see if they connect (up to 2 seconds too late isn't a big deal as you'll need all your energy). And add that collectors can also connect to your weapons =P

[Mimsy]

My typical strategy is to establish a defensive position and then push in with blasters/shields/etc. I like being in a situation where the fight is stable; I could walk away for an hour and the only thing different is I'd have a ton of aether collected. In CW1 it was easy (took like 2 mortars), but in 3 it's slow so it's definitely a beginner strategy. For your starting collectors, instead of laborously pausing/deactivating each, which beginners aren't going to do, just make sure the collectors are in a line one by one. I'll do mine in a C-shape on the border of the area I can keep safe. After about 4 collectors you can branch out and build more than one at once. The fundamental strategy of energy management (i.e. not overbuilding) is that for every 1 (or is it 1.5?) excess energy generation, you can be building another thing concurrently. So if you have 10 production and 5 drain, you should be building five more things than you are. I'm pretty sure ammo refills at twice this rate so be careful if you're building a lot of weapons; when they finish, you'll suddenly have much more drain.

Beginners aren't going to be pausing the game obsessively. They're going to be very inefficient in general, so these tips should be to help them just know what they're doing. Some more beginner tips:
- Remember reactors make 2.5* the energy of even a perfectly placed collector; when you have the energy, delete them and place relays as needed. (typically mid-game for me). IMO it's dumb and a perfect collector should produce more than a reactor, but whatev. Possibly an advanced tip.
- placing your command node AFTER your collectors (or re-placing it since it's still paused) will show you what it connects to.
- Try not to need to fend off the creeper early on but if you do use blasters not shields. Shields are energy hogs and don't reduce the amount of creeper anyway.
- if you DO build a shield, disarm it when not in use because they keep using energy even when there's nothing to repel (which is also dumb and inconsistent with blasters so beginners won't know it).
- If you have ore, a sprayer keeps back thin creeper extremely well.
- A strafer is a relatively cheap way to destroy creeper when it's in a narrow canyon or overflowing from digitalis.

[Amram]

Strafers are also a good way to cut-off digitalis near the source so you can more easily deal with the rest of it.  Once the creeper is shallow enough, the strafers will hit the Digitalis quite hard, and a couple of them can easily clear out thin strips of Digitalis.  If those strafers are crossing the Digitalis, they'll cut its supply completely, and that makes it so much easier to push back.

[Valley]

Start with tips on the interface. Then for beginners guide, just give details of what each unit does (e.g. the energy produced by a reactor, which isn't stated in-game) instead of a complete walkthrough. Maybe a tip or two for the harder levels, but for the most part the levels are straightforward. Basically this should be a collection of what you learn from Lia, plus a few important details.

For this I would just make sure the person reading understand the energy output doesn't include any forge upgrades (different outputs vary by energy upgrades). Or actually list all of those as well.

[Mimsy]

For this I would just make sure the person reading understand the energy output doesn't include any forge upgrades (different outputs vary by energy upgrades). Or actually list all of those as well.

Forge energy production upgrades is a flat 20% per level, resulting in +200% energy production at the max of 10. But I think talking about the forge abilities goes in intermediate strategy.

@pawel See if you can trim those paragraphs down. For me it's tl;dr. :D