Custom Map #1914: The Doomsday Device. By: Tyler

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This topic is for discussion of map #1914: The Doomsday Device


Author: Tyler
Size: 250x150

Desc:
Can you save Earth and defuse the Doomsday Device? And can you find the Space Easter Egg? A legend says that "one shall find the Egg where skies meet". --- Info: this is a Futurama-themed map. You can read useful hints if you connect the icons of Futurama characters to your network. ATTENTION: this map will be almost impossible at first, and requires some expertise and clever tricks to solve. You can get useful help from the characters and from the Forum. (This time there is NO CRPL, except for images.

[Tyler21]

Did you find the Easter Egg?
There is an Easter Egg game hidden on the map. Find it and

Spoiler

...you can play this awesome game within CW3!

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UPDATE: there was a major error in the strategy guide, check the corrected one!

Hints

Try to solve it without hints ;-)
It is more fun to solve this puzzle on your own (although it might take much longer).


(0: Save frequently)
1

Spoiler

Read all the in-game hints, especially the ones that refer to Aether.

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2

Spoiler

Do not establish defenses, it is only a waste of time.

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3

Spoiler

Make sure to collect all Aether packs on the map. There are 7 deposits, 3 of them already have a siphon.

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4

Spoiler

Forge upgrades are essential. You can figure it out which are the most relevant on this map. Use your Aether wisely.

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5

Spoiler

You will lose the Forge effects if the Forge is out of ammo. It needs a constant resupply, make sure that your CN or at least one guppy is supplying it.

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6

Spoiler

The Moon has all units except for nullifiers that you will need for this map.

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7

Spoiler

You can destroy the colorful antennas with nullifiers.

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8

Spoiler

Make sure to stop resupplying unused units while they are connected to the CN. Energy = time.

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9

Spoiler

Check the terrain on the Device carefully. You might find some weak spots.

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10 (key hint)

Spoiler

Most of you obviously know this, but remember that the CN can build and support things while in air.

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Strategy guide

Spoiler

First of all there are basically two different strategies: the safe and relatively long (I originally intended this one), and the risky but short one.
I won't tell you the latter here for obvious reasons, but the scores indicate that some players already figured it out.

The start is the same for both strategies
Pause the game and do the following steps:

• Build a siphon on all Aether packs.
• Set 'stop resupplying' to all units on the Moon, including the guppy pads.
• Send one guppy near the forge, use the other to finish siphons that are scattered around the map.
• Build a Collector to connect Hypnotoad and the +1 Relay to your network.

Unpause the game now.

Wait until you collect the Hypnotoad, then build a relay in the PZ. This will connect the Forge and the 3 Aether packs in 'Madison Cube Garden'.
Wait until the CN charges the Forge. When the last green packet leaves your CN, send the CN immediately to orbit.

Meanwhile the guppy and some Aether are about to arrive at the Forge, and you can start the Forge upgrades.
Are you hesitating about choosing upgrades? Listen to the Futurama characters. Bender (in Robot Arms Apartments on the South) gives a hint about energy storage and Leela (next to the initial landing position) mentions unit speed. Build speed, packet speed and energy generation might be also helpful.

The next part contains the following steps for the safe but long strategy:
When the CN is ready again, land it on the brown asteroid (the middle one) and wait until it charges up to 50 energy.
Build a nullifier on the GREEN (EDIT: sorry, previously I incorrectly wrote 'blue', it was my mistake) circular platform at the GREEN antenna. Steer the CN above the nullifier to supply it. There are five spots on the map which can help you to steer your CN: two in the city, the two asteriods and the Moon.
When the blue antenna is destroyed, note the small grey platform. Build a nullifer on it.

Repeat this procedure on the other antennas. You only have to figure out the proper order of antennas. It is useful to save to a different slot after you destroy antennas.

(Later some new collectors on the Moon might be very helpful.)

For the end-game, keep Hint#6 in your mind: everything you need is already on the Moon. Combine it with Hint#9 and you're done.

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----
Off-topic:
I think I won't make any new maps with similar innovative concepts and/or difficulty.
The reason is that I am very disappointed and sad.
It is really disappointing when players rate such maps to 1 simply because they can't beat it. :(

Despite the fact that I wrote in the description that this is a difficult and almost impossible map and needs expertise.
If they do not want to think hard and do not even want to get additional info from the forum, why did they start this map at all? At least they could have read the description...

[Jerdog]

This map is totally cool.  I love Futurama.

I will resist putting it down.  You obviously put a ton of work into it.  And then some.
I don't usually do puzzle maps.  I only attempted this because the description lied (no CRPL).

I may try it with a full walkthough just to see the other text.

[Asbestos]

Fun map, sort of. It looks great, but I can't figure out for the life of me what I'm supposed to do.

[DylanIs]

Its always nice to see new things still being created.  Thank you for taking the time to put this together and not making it impossible :)

[Tyler21]

I only attempted this because the description lied (no CRPL).

When I say "no CRPL" I mean that there is no CRPL that affects the gameplay. CRPL is used for images, effects, messages and for the countdown only (and of course the Easter Egg, but that does not affect the main game at all).

Enemy units including emitters, runner nests, digitalis, spore towers, etc. are standard ones, and build limits on player units / forge levels do not count as CRPL so I do not know what you were refering to.

[Tyler21]

Its always nice to see new things still being created.  Thank you for taking the time to put this together and not making it impossible :)

I am glad to see that you liked it. Did you find the Space Easter Egg?

[chwooly]

I think 1 reason for the low score is that you have to get both

Spoiler

Yellow and blue neutralized within 2 1/2 mins 

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other wise it must be restarted. Personally I liked the map even though I gave up after 15 or so restarts.

[Tyler21]

Oh holy ****

I was wondering why you started with

Spoiler

the blue antenna

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and I realized that I made a terrible error in the strategy guide.

You have to start with

Spoiler

the GREEN antenna, not the blue

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that will make things LOT easier! I am really sorry about this, maybe I am colorblind :S

But you are right, you have to

Spoiler

neutralize the first (but only the first!) antenna (that is the GREEN) in less than 3 min, unless the runners will spawn everything

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[J]

Off-topic:
I think I won't make any new maps with similar innovative concepts and/or difficulty.
The reason is that I am very disappointed and sad.
It is really disappointing when players rate such maps to 1 simply because they can't beat it. :(

Despite the fact that I wrote in the description that this is a difficult and almost impossible map and needs expertise.
If they do not want to think hard and do not even want to get additional info from the forum, why did they start this map at all? At least they could have read the description...

There are people who do like your map, focus on them (read the comments) and don't be disappointed if a hard map gets low ratings. It's normal (check 3P's hard maps, low rating fiesta, but these maps were not bad).
There's a mass of people who don't look at the description (or don't scroll), open the map, lose, vote 1 and move on.
Long near-impossible maps with surprises often need a full walkthrough to be completed, try to avoid that (give more room for error along the road) or make them short so people won't lose masses of progress if they lose. As long as hard maps are made for the players (and not to beat them) they're usually fine.

[Tyler21]

Thanks J for your support.

My main issue wasn't simply the fact that the rating scale is unidimensional.

Despite the fact that every map has ultimately one rating and those reflect both the fun and the difficulty, the rating is still one of the most infleuntial factors which determine players' choice of maps. I don't have a problem with this. I usually don't download maps below 7.0 rating (like I usually don't watch movies below ~7.0 imdb), because I usually trust the wisdom of crowds. Except for the cases when I know the author's previous work, and I know that the low rating is only because of the map's difficulty (or in the case of movies when I am sure that the majority of audience gets it wrong).

My main issue here was that there is no category filter such as 'standard maps / recommended for casual players' or 'challenging maps / recommended only for the most hardcore CWers'. And this leads to the current situation when casual players rate extreme difficult maps. It's like rating a '70s thrilling sci-fi (the Invasion of the Body Snatchers might be a good example :) ) when you are 12 and the biggest fan of the Transformers... simply because they fit the broad category of 'adventure' and 'sci-fi', they might have still utterly different target audiences.

I'd welcome such category-based sorting in CS. However, it would raise numerous questions, for example, who would do the sorting. But that's only a hypothetical question, you are right that it's much easier to establish a reputation among similar players.

[J]

Good hard maps do tend to get a lot of comments (bad maps usually don't), often a lot more than good easy maps, so that might be a way to pick them out. If you look at the forums twenty times a day you won't miss them ::)

[Tyler21]

check 3P's hard maps, low rating fiesta

by the way, thanks for the tip, I already love them :)

[ThomBat]

Off-topic:
I think I won't make any new maps with similar innovative concepts and/or difficulty.
The reason is that I am very disappointed and sad.
It is really disappointing when players rate such maps to 1 simply because they can't beat it. :(

Despite the fact that I wrote in the description that this is a difficult and almost impossible map and needs expertise.
If they do not want to think hard and do not even want to get additional info from the forum, why did they start this map at all? At least they could have read the description...

Please don't be (permanently) sad! Even though I don't know Futurama and I don't have much patience with puzzlers I still thought this was a fantastic map: clearly a labour of love and rather zen, using a trick that was hidden in the open. Short and sweet :-)

[Telanir]

Tyler, you've done a great job pal. Don't let the rating get you down and keep pumping out that new content.

It's really hard to guess what makes a good rating, but maps that require thought from the user sometimes suffer in this case, because that can build frustration. The CW3 playerbase really varies in this respect, you will often get an impatient player who thinks they're above solving your puzzle and giving you a higher rating, sometimes its just their instinct.

I'll vouch, the map rating isn't an accurate depiction of this map, keep up the work!