An impractical way to obtain more AC

[florrat]

Suppose you want to increase your AC-income, here is a completely impractical way to do that:

- Build Bombers on Power zones
- Bomb near your Sprayers
- Let the Sprayers collect the AC and convert it back to ore
- Repeat and Profit! ;D

[teknotiss]

i'm not disbelieving you, but in what way do you profit?
ie how much ac more does it work out at?
got some stats? save us all having to head to the wiki or experiment

[florrat]

The wiki says that Bombers have 2x ammo/shot. So your amount of AC/ore should be doubled each time you do it. Since a Bomber has 120 AC storage, this means you'll get 120 AC per bomber run (Sprayers will collect 240 AC, and you'll need 120 AC to refill bomber). I tested this, and it indeed works this way.

[Grauniad]

I think there are 3 possibilities here.

1. The wiki is wrong. Many wiki things are wrong
2. The wiki is being misinterpreted.
3. actually, that's only two. :)

As for testing it, I was so intrigued by the possibilities, I constructed this map to explore the ancient art of alchemy. ALthoug, alchemy rightly is to transmute one element into another, I'd probably have to revert to a more ancient art to create something from nothing. :)

The map starts with only a single source of 240 units of Ore.

I constructed some energy, placed some sprayers in the hole (actually, I also spent time enlarging the hole). I constructed a single bomber.

I then extracted the 240 units of ore. Mysteriously, two units of ore vanished.

That left me with 78 units of AC in my CN reservoir.

60 in the bomber, 50 each in the two sprayers set to collect and return AC, 2 units vanished, 78 in the CN: = 240. (I hope my math is still sound).

I sent the bomber off to dump all the ore between the two sprayers. They sucked it all up and returned it dutifully to the CN.

Some must have evaporated (as AC is wont to do). at the end of the first run, I had 77 units of ore in my CN and 50.3 and 50.2 respectively in the Sprayers. The other .5 went AWOL.

I repeated the bombing run and the situation seemed to remain stable. No doubt repeated runs may cause additional loss of AC to evaporation, but there was no dramatic increase of AC in my CN's reservoir.

The map is attached for anyone who wishes to prove (or disprove) the theory of "Endless Ore". If my experiment was wrong, please submit a different map proving that a bomber can create Ore/AC

[Grauniad]

Edit: I read the OP again and discovered that the numbers must be referring to a bomber on a PZ. In that case some magic does seem to be at work.

After recreating the experiment, I had a an empty Sprayer, a bomber with 120 units of AC and 116 in the reservoir. (4 units seemed to have mysteriously disappeared this time round.)

After a bombing run, I had 50.9 units in the Sprayer, 120 in the Bomber pad and 185 in the CN reservoir. A net increase of approximately 120 units of AC.

interesting. I guess we may have to alert Virgil to this for his consideration.

[pawel345]

I think that this might be a fun thing to use in some puzzle maps, and won't have an impact on the regular gameplay as to use this technique would consume too much time/resources and a PZ. It will be usually easier to just use conventional means and this could remain as an interesting feature like launchers shooting via micro rifts and through the wall damage mechanics.


Edit: This method seems to generate around 1 AC/second depending on the distance between the sprayer and PZ bomber so it seems a cool way to use a PZ as an ore mine :D

[J]

2x ammo/shot means it uses twice as much ammo for every shot (PZ bertha uses 0.5x ammo/shot), so the wiki is misinterpreted. Only build a bomber on a PZ if you want to save some space.

[pawel345]

No the PZ bomber does drop 2x the AC you put into it. So it's 2x Ammo and 4x AC per shot

[teknotiss]

looks like this will come up in a map of mine soon! :D

[Grauniad]

looks like this will come up in a map of mine soon! :D

Don't plan on making a map using this. It is an error and will shortly be corrected.

[pawel345]

:( NOO don't nerf the PZ bomber!! It's a cool feature  ;D

[TrickyDragon]

It was supposed to be nerfed since alpha when the sprayer came out..........

[Lord_Farin]

looks like this will come up in a map of mine soon! :D

Don't plan on making a map using this. It is an error and will shortly be corrected.

The way I see it, the AC economy is already underpowered compared to the energy economy. For instance, a single ore mine is insufficient to supply a bomber. It doesn't need further restraining, even if the "feature" entered as a "bug". Don't forget, this tactic occupies a power zone -- already a considerable investment.

[teknotiss]

looks like this will come up in a map of mine soon! :D

Don't plan on making a map using this. It is an error and will shortly be corrected.

The way I see it, the AC economy is already underpowered compared to the energy economy. For instance, a single ore mine is insufficient to supply a bomber. It doesn't need further restraining, even if the "feature" entered as a "bug". Don't forget, this tactic occupies a power zone -- already a considerable investment.

i agree, and this isn't a game breaker, the investment needed to get a pay off is pretty large, and many maps won't accomodate it anyway, not enough room or time to get it going, or handy PZ's either.
it's more of a gimmick and i'd not want to see it changed

[Grauniad]

The way I see it, the AC economy is already underpowered compared to the energy economy. For instance, a single ore mine is insufficient to supply a bomber. It doesn't need further restraining, even if the "feature" entered as a "bug". Don't forget, this tactic occupies a power zone -- already a considerable investment.

How do you arrive at this? How many collectors or reactors do you need to supply a Strafer? The issue we're discussing is rare, and has been acknowledged to be hard to exploit. But it breaks things. A map maker can now not place a specified quantity of ore on a map and rely on a player's ingenuity to use only that much AC.  In over the top map situations, it is possible to exponentially grow the supply of AC, making it "overpowered." - Try creating 10 bombers on PZs, and see what happens to the AC inventory.

Something like this is unbalanced, since it has never been intended or fully integrated. There should be no discussion on keeping this defect alive.

If you want more ore, add more ore deposits, or create an anti-creeper emitter. Same strategy as has been used in CW2.