Custom Map #734: Surge. By: Dook

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This topic is for discussion of map #734: Surge


Author: Dook
Size: 220x110

Desc:
Only devastation remains in the surge's wake. Rush threw the metal grid to take out the wave generator. [game warning - 2nd wave is significantly stronger than the 1st] Thanks to J (creeper wall emitter); Flabort (dormant /aka flip emitters), and Molay (adaptive emitter).

[PMouser]

Help please, i cant get over on this, thanks

[speef]

Help please, i cant get over on this, thanks

I like grindy maps, but this one is too tedious for even me. ;p

Spoiler

I was able to kill the rightmost 5 emitters and 2 spore towers before the first Wall of Tedium wiped me out. Quickly siphon both energy crystals and build the nullifiers you need to clear the right side of the screen, plus 5 or 6 beams and a sprayer.  When the Wall of Tedium gets near your beams, pick them up and move them to the left of the WOT; move them back when the WOT passes. The WOT won't kill sprayers, cannons, or mortars.

Build a forge and siphon the 100 technowossits from the middle right. Put the tech points to good use (I did 1 range, 1 ore efficiency, 1 energy efficiency, and 1 energy pool).

Every cycle of the Wall of Tedium will see you picking up the spore towers AGAIN, moving them twice, and rebuilding all your collectors. The WOT eats collectors and reactors and can't be stopped by any number of mortars (I pretty much filled up the top right quadrant before I gave up), so don't bother with reactors.

I kept slowly adding beams and mortars and cannons, and crept out to the to center top and center bottom emitters and killed those. This gets you two totems, finally.

Then I forgot to move my beams and the Wall of Tedium ate them all AGAIN, and I quit in annoyance, but the level does seem possible. :p

Things that didn't work for me:

- I tried making a power capacitor out of guppies, and while this works on most maps where you can't upgrade energy storage, I can't recommend it on this one; getting past the first guppy or two is a challenge since your power income is so limited. Survivability seems to be better if you put the landing zone somewhere to the left of the guppy's little airfield, but I found it to be overall a waste of time (after I got up to 2, I had to shut them down, as my mass of mortars sucked the capacitor dry as soon as the WOT ate my collectors, and recharging the guppies extended my recovery/rebuild time to greater than the WOT's cycle time, which was not sustainable.)

- I tried turning the top right quadrant into a solid mass of mortars to punch a hole in the Wall of Tedium so I could build some frigging reactors and collectors behind them. Doesn't work.

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I will probably come back to this tomorrow, just because it bothers me that I didn't beat it.

While the bit where you're not allowed to have collectors or reactors is bloody annoying, kudos to Dook for making something that has the potential to win against a player; that's a rare map. :)

[Dook]

Sense i can see the map is inherently frustrating i'll give some pointers.

I spent more time than i'd like to admit tweaking the map to be hard yet beatable so i'm somewhat hesitant to just give away this spoiler. But seeing the low amount of scores to downloads i can see i kinda failed at making a difficult map and just succeeded at making an annoying map that people don't want to play. So for those that still wish to beat it yet are frustrated then here you go...

Spoiler

1. The first wave is very much defensible. You can protect a large quantity of collectors to keep a good pace before the 2nd "wave of tedium" comes in. I used a lot of cannons to accomplish this.
2. It is possible to destroy all dormant emitters before the 1st wave hits them. This also gives access to the totems. Most of the power zones are best used later after the wall emitter is down.
3. The 100 Aether can be used on top of what ever you farm for the forge weapon. making the adaptive emitter in front of the creeper wall emitter much easier and quicker to deal with. After that goes down its just the usual creeper world grind. I accomplished this before the 4th wave arrived. but looking at the scores i can see some people were able to do it much faster.
4. avoid reactors completely. If you take out the dormant emitters quickly there is more than enough room for a ton of collectors. Before the wall emitter goes down energy is not that critical anyway.
5. a good point speef made - your cannons, mortars, forge, and command centers will live threw a wave no problem. however the collectors, relays, and beams will not. you'll have to rebuild collectors and relays. the beams can be lifted and moved before the wall hits them.
6. This is the tedious part... the wall is rather slow. you can rebuild collectors and relays in such a fashion as to maintain power connections across the creeper wall as it moves. Doing this keeps a decent amount of your power up even while the wall is passing threw your base.
7. beams on the 2 power zones next to the totems will completely shut down spores from entering the east side of the map. Allowing you to take out the creeper wall emitter undisturbed (besides the wall of course).
8. If you find taking out the adaptive emitter in front of the creeper wall emitter is too difficult due to the confined space. taking out the adap. emitter to the left makes a clear shot to nullify the walls of tedium.  The adap. emitter in the center right had its range shortened to allow this.
9 This pointer is hidden because it really breaks the map but for those that really don't care...

Spoiler

the shortened center right adaptive emitter range helps in ways not intended HINT HINT. I only noticed this when testing out cheap tricks to beat the map (again more time than i want to admit tweaking). But decided to leave it there as a reward for the clever player. I made sure the map was beatable even with out using it.

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The map was made to be rushed till the creeper wall emitter went down. Then grinded after that. And probably needs to be played as such. I admit the map is rather unbearable if someone wanted to take their time from start to finish.

[mmh]

There is a way to make it easier.

Spoiler

Build a guppy and some beams. When the wave has passed the creeper wall emitter, build a nullifier next to it and fly the guppy there and nullify the wall emitter.

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