Custom Map #160: Surrounded. By: JoaoPistori

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This topic is for discussion of map #160: Surrounded


Author: JoaoPistori
Size: 320x260

Desc:
#PRPL units! My first map in Particle Fleet. Couldn't hesitate in making prpl units and a ship schematic similar to the CW3 Thor. In this map you are surrounded by the Particulate - lots of emmiters, ship and dopel spawners, cannons and emergent, not counting 3 special prpl scripted units! It is hard at the beggining and you should have earlier offensive, otherwise you would not have enough strenght and space to fight against the enemy ships and dopels. I hope you like it! As soon as the wiki gets update

[JoaoPistori]

*As soon as the wiki gets updated with more prpl commands I'll create more advanced prpl units.
(The end of the map description - didn't considered text max size upon writing in map editor :P)

Main idea was to make prpl cannons fire at random ships and energy sources (instead of just energy sources). If someone knows a prpl command that can "detect" ships I would be very grateful and use it in my next map  :)

[GoodMorning]

GetAllShipsInRange. See Nicant's proximity emitter. Note that that script is bugged, as it GASIR returns a list (not a stack push of many UIDs as CRPL did).

[Stickman]

North-east part spoils whole map. These piercing cannons are just dull, frustrating and unrewarding to deal with. Look at "Experiment 14" by Sorrontis - it has piercing cannon, and it's much more enjoyable situation - you can bait cannon with emitters to the south of it and energy mine is to the side, allowing player to cut power easier.

Your cannons don't provide any interesting ways to deal with them except waiting for them to run out of ammo and then rush with lathe-equipped ships.
BTW, why do these have loads and loads ammo? About 40 shots would enough to dispatch anything short of mini-thor, yet yours have something like 500. Why? It becomes frustrating to wait for a very short opening.
Your lathe ships are being built? Bad luck, wait till piercing cannon slowly depletes it's reserves again.
Doppel decided to pop out and your MK7's are still chewing through it's thick hide? Bad luck, wait till cannon eats ammo at snail's pace.
Mismanaged your timing with lathe ships? Get full face of piercing shots, lose your lathe ships and wait for BERSERK CANNON OF DOOM to calm itself down. And probably wait one more cycle because your lathe ships are still being built.

Great map, absolutely horrible ending, that kills all enjoyment you've had on this map. Maybe there is some cute and elegant way for the ending, but I don't see one (dude named "relan" probably knows one, judging by his time).

Edit1: I've checked a map, n-e cannons actually have 500 or 550 shots. Mind-blowing.

[JoaoPistori]

Thanks GoodMorning for the reference.

//

You should review your strategy. Sending blue particles or emergent will undesirably activate them. And going with ships against those north-east cannons is often a suicide.

Spoiler

Note that you can mire land to distract those cannons and while they reload, move OMNIs to destroy them. The next spoiler contains a strategy to easily beat them, so don't read it if you want a good challenge.

Spoiler

Put your grabbers and your blue emitter in collect mode, so the friendly particles wouldn't activate the cannons. Emergent should also not attack those cannons. When ready, wait for the cannon unload all its ammo firing at mired land and move OMNIs to destroy them. If they can't, activate grabbers, emitter, send emergent and latche ships to attack. Your hammer pair is also good for tanking one of them. The 2 last north-east cannons (the ones over metallic land) aren't hard because they will continuously fire at the newer-conquered mired land and unload faster.

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[relan]

relan here, I use the same strategy to the uploader.

Spoiler

Using the mired land to distract one of the cannon fire, once the cannon depleted, rush your omnis(I use ten omnis) to take out that cannon.
After that, omnis will got destroyed(even call them fly back, they will be shot down by other cannon), so rebuild them, wait for the good timing and rush again to take out another cannon.

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[D0m0nik]

Huge fan of your CW3 maps and this one was my favourite PF map yet! (Sorry Sorrontis!)

This is exactly what I was expecting from the PF - huge, epic battles with a full fleet struggling to overcome a powerful enemy. Loved it.

The only negative was the Mini-Thor, I found him a bit disappointing but probably because I was a little too excited to give it a go, I was ecepting fireworks. I ended up using it for nothing more than a battering ram.

Not sure what was supposed to happen in the SE, the four red cannons hardly fired.

Great battle map though and I can't wait to see more.

[JoaoPistori]

Thanks D0m0nik!

My next Mini-Thor will have custom modules (so, it is going to be really useful, overpower and differentiated! - I just need some cool images for those modules and their projectiles).

I also didn't stop editing CW3 - I just don't have time in this part of the year and came back editing this month. Please expect for more CRPL and PRPL hard strategic maps!

[D0m0nik]

Great news! Not as much happening in CW3 at the mo but I keep an eye on it and I hope it continues to provide fresh and interesting maps.

[chwooly]

Where I am stuck is how do you get past the 3000 or more particles that bunch up on the top side of the island, Thus preventing you from miring the large island and preventing you from getting any ships close to the 2 cannons that are on structure?

[JoaoPistori]

Spoiler

Upgrade all MK7 ships with gems and they can do a great destruction. The CannonShip is also good with amp gem. This worked very well for me.

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[Karsten75]

GetAllShipsInRange. See Nicant's proximity emitter. Note that that is bugged, as it returns a list, not a stack push of many UIS as CRPL did.

That's not strictly "bugged" - it's chanced, since V introduces stacks lists in PRPL and that makes handling lists easier. .

[GoodMorning]

I meant that Nicant's script is bugged, not the game. I assume you mean lists?

[Karsten75]

I meant that Nicant's script is bugged, not the game. I assume you mean lists?

Yea, buggy brain today. Fixed. Thanks.

[JoaoPistori]

Hello everyone!

I'm just passing to tell that my new CW3 map has all its scripts finished (there are more than 110 scripts) and now it is just terrain design and gameplay work! (I will still take time to finish and upload, since I have around ~1.5 hour per day to edit games)

And my next map in PF needs some small help in a custom module. I got examples from Planetfall's modules ( http://knucklecracker.com/forums/index.php?topic=21624.0 ) and I picked the Nuker module as a base for a new module. I changed images, max range, projectile strenght and other things. But the main ideia os this module was to fire only at targets that are in a certain max angle offset. What I mean: the module must have a "limited field of view" and shouldn't target units beyond the angle limit. Although I'm having some difficulties in fixing the preference bug:

I changed and added things in the script and it works fine when the module has only one possible target in range (the point: preferences will not make targeting differences, as it has only 1 possible target) - it fires against it when the angle permits.

The peoblem is when it has more than 1 target, and one of them doesn't match the angle preference:
The module itself has prefered targets (as the own Planetfall's Nuker module), counting firstly by unit type, then the nearest one of the prefered.
The situation: imagine 2 emitters, both are in "range" but one is near from de module than the other. Now imagine that this nearest one doesn't match the angle restriction while the farthest one matches. The module itself doesn't fire, because it prefers to attack the nearest emitter while the angle restriction blocks it (and should block - this is correct). But it also doesn't fire at the farthest emitter that is in "angle range", because it prefers to attack the nearest one. I tried changing things in ":IsTargetValid" script part but then all my ideas of fixing this "bug" (not actually a bug, it's missing correct checks) weren't enough. Some of them resulted im the module not considering angle anymore (even with more than 2 if-else angle checks) and some of them made the module disrespect the angle offset for the type preference (when there's an emitter and a doppel - doppel is higher ranked in preference, then the module was firing at it disrespecting angle restriction, but without the emitter in range, the angle restriction was respected [again, only 1 possible target])

Can anybody help me? I would be very grateful! Thanks