Custom Map #5215: Asteroid Mining. By: Up-Level

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[yum-forum]

Fantastic present for me for New Year! 10/10 and Big Thanks!  :)

[cornucanis]

I have now become a guppy. Gup gup gup!

[D0m0nik]

5 mins behind you on first run, perhaps not worth a video!

[cornucanis]

My first run was a little over 19 minutes... Then NDeo countered with 17 so I went all out for my next run. Your first run was better than my first run, but I definitely understand if you'd rather move on to other maps than refine your strategy for this map since this one can get pretty annoying with the guppy infrastructures. I was only interested to see how your strategy compared with mine here because I spent so long refining my strategy here. About 6 or 7 hours with the two runs combined. Thanks for giving it a run. I'll share more info about how I got it down so low later, but please wait a day or two before discussing strategy here since it's still the competition map until Friday and we wouldn't want the pool being polluted  ;)

[D0m0nik]

Had a second run, still 2 mins off the pace, that is an ocean of time!

[cornucanis]

Ok now that the competition is over I have returned as promised with an in-depth explanation of how I achieved my 14 minute time on this map. Very lengthy read with pretty big spoilers ahead  ;)

Spoiler

First of all, I should refer you to this image.



These are the names I'll be using to refer to the islands. I've named them for what they look like to me, with the exception of the final island. Since this is a family friendly forum I thought it best to just call it "Final Island"  ;D

I've also numbered the main emitter islands in the order I attacked them. Finally, I've laid down a basic infrastructure to illustrate how you should fill the PZs and handle the smaller ore asteroids, as well as final CN placement. I'll go over each of these things real quick.

- PZs: You'll notice I have several islands on the left side of the map connected using PZ relays with PZ reactors to boost energy production. You will obviously have them blanketed with collectors as well when actually playing. This large network is one of the key parts of the strategy. Notice how the PZ relay on the spore island is enough to connect several other islands all on its own. All extra PZs should be filled with reactors for energy production. I didn't bother filling the PZs on Knife Island because it was pretty  much over at that point since I only had one island left; cleaning up the creeper wouldn't be worth the time.

- Emitter Islands: Given how the networks connected and the strength of the emitters, it was obvious I would be attacking "Final Island" last. Since going back and forth across the map is inefficient, I decided to attack the other islands in a straight path. That's why my attack order starts in one corner of the map and sweeps to the other, to cut down on  unnecessary flight time. This also conveniently left my highest priority targets, the Spore Islands, right at the beginning of the attack queue  8)

- CN Placement: The CN on Main Island is self explanatory. This should be here for the entire game. CN #2  starts off on Secondary Island, but moves to Pistol Island once you've secured it to act as an anchor for the western network since your mobile CN will be leaving it to go to Knife Island. CN #3 will be the mobile CN. It starts on Main Island to give your primary CN backup energy, but as soon as you get your bertha built you will move the mobile CN to each island you're attacking to provide energy on the fly and possibly process AC.

- Small Ore Islands: Each of the small ore asteroids needs only an ore mine, a collector, and a guppy set to "ore" in order to process ore. The guppy will fly ore back to your CN for processing to AC. Some islands will also need a beam to protect them early on; I didn't build those particular islands until I had taken down the spore towers. The two behind your Main Island are protected from spores by the beams on Main Island. The asteroid marked "Guppy Island" was where I parked my guppies when they were on standby and I didn't have anywhere better to park them. It's close to most of the action and safe from creeper.

So now that I've revealed most of the fundamentals underlying my strategy, I'll give a rough play-by-play of how I executed. It's been almost a week since my run so I'm a little foggy, but I'll do my best to recall from the saves I had (which I used to pull some screenshots).

First of all you should grab the 2 spare CN techs. Hopefully you can figure out how to do that yourself. With all 3 CNs unlocked, drop the first on main island and begin a collector network. CN 2 should be ready to drop around this time on Secondary Island. Start another collector network there. When CN 3 is ready it will go on Main Island to reinforce the energy supply there.

On Secondary Island you should build a guppy quickly to nullify the spore tower and place a relay on the PZ. While getting the ore mines built I also made a shield there and sent it to Main Island to help assault the emitter. Meanwhile on Main Island, as soon as the collector network was finished I built a blaster, a forge, a sprayer, and some ore mines. I don't remember the precise order. You'll have to experiment and determine the best precise order yourself  :P

Once those are all built, get a second blaster and a second shield going as well. Also a terp, to make room for the Bertha. Note you'll only need to terp 2 tiles. After that I never used the terp again. At some point in this process you'll also have to build beams, but try to hold off on those for as long as possible so you're not diverting energy needlessly. When the forge is built, spend a point or two on energy then dump the rest into build speed so the Bertha can get up ASAP. You should be able to quickly nullify the emitter with your blasters, sprayer, and shield(s).

By the time the Bertha is built you should be able to have both blasters, both shields, several sprayers, adequate beams, adequate guppies, and ideally set up the two asteroids behind Main Island for ore production. Here is a screenshot right as the last packet gets to my Bertha on my best run. This is at 5 minutes 20 seconds.



So you have your attack force and the Bertha is up and running. At this point I recommend throwing a forge point into energy storage to give a little wiggle room, and a few more points into energy production. After that start pumping ore efficiency. Start flying your units towards the nearest Spore Island before your Bertha finishes loading so they land right as it gets ready to fire. You should easily be able to subdue the island and place a nullifier. When finished nullifying, immediately fill the PZs as shown in my first image to begin a sulf sufficient network and reduce guppy reliance. Every bit of guppy energy saved now can be used for the final 2 islands (the real threats).

As soon as you clear your landing pad on Spore Island #2 drop a relay down so you get hooked into that PZ reactor from the last island. You'll still need guppies, but every drop of energy helps. After nullifying Spore Island #2 quickly drop 2 more PZ reactors. This should cover most basic energy needs.

You'll see a pattern here. After clearing the Spore Islands start with the one I marked #1 and sweep down towards #4. On each island you will fire a Bertha shell right as your units land, and quickly drop a relay down to connect your army to your PZ reactors and save guppy energy. You will soon have spare energy to build more guppies on the spore islands for support.

Upon clearing Pistol Island you will change the guppies on Secondary Island to Ore Guppies and move the CN from Secondary Island forward to Pistol Island to support your energy network there since the other CN will be leaving the network to assault Knife Island. Clear the first emitter on Knife Island ASAP as the PZ from it will allow you to build another relay and connect to the network.

I sent my army ahead to Final Island when the nullifier on Knife Island was a few ammo away from completion just to save a few seconds. No point cleaning up the PZs when almost done. Finally, here is a screenshot right as I am transitioning to Final Island. This is at 12 minutes 41 seconds.



That about wraps it up! Some parting tips:

- Never let energy go to waste. If you are producing spare energy, use it to build or fuel a guppy. Remember that a guppy only requires 25 energy to build, so you can easily make several AC guppies very cheaply. Similarly, each of the ore asteroids only takes 55 energy to set up so you can set up 2 with 1 guppy load. Note that guppies request packets at a VERY high rate when fueling, so keep an eye on them. They can easily cause deficits in your network if you don't pay close attention, which could mean denying ammo to your Bertha. This is VERY BAD! The entire strategy relies on using every bertha shot well.

- Be very hands-on with your Bertha! Make sure to target the spot you will be firing upon well before you actually fire so the Bertha has time to turn and aim before you need to make the shot. Keep it disarmed until you're ready to fire, then quickly arm it and disarm again as soon as it fires to prevent wasted shots. You will be going a little bit over 75 ammo often, but try not to go too far over 75. Weapons request packets at double the rate when they are at less than half ammo, so keeping your Bertha ammo lower means it will receive ammo at a higher rate. (Sorry, this part is wrong. Only blasters do this.) If you're playing properly, the main bottleneck for your assault should be Bertha shots so you always want to keep the Bertha firing optimally.

- Use Main Island as an AC processing plant for guppies. Have ore guppies on all the asteroids set to land somewhere on Main Island. You can then build several AC guppies on Main Island to send the processed AC to the battlefield. If your AC guppy is full and you don't have anywhere to use it, get it off the landing pad even if it just means moving it 3 tiles over. Moving it off the landing pad allows you to send more AC to the pad so you're not wasting ore.

- I feel like I'm forgetting a lot of stuff but this is already extremely long so I'll just cut it here. If anyone bothered to read this far and has any questions let me know and I'll try to answer  ;D

[close]

[yum-forum]

Ok now that the competition is over I have returned as promised with an in-depth explanation of how I achieved my 14 minute time on this map. Very lengthy read with pretty big spoilers ahead  ;)

Spoiler

First of all, I should refer you to this image.



These are the names I'll be using to refer to the islands. I've named them for what they look like to me, with the exception of the final island. Since this is a family friendly forum I thought it best to just call it "Final Island"  ;D

I've also numbered the main emitter islands in the order I attacked them. Finally, I've laid down a basic infrastructure to illustrate how you should fill the PZs and handle the smaller ore asteroids, as well as final CN placement. I'll go over each of these things real quick.

- PZs: You'll notice I have several islands on the left side of the map connected using PZ relays with PZ reactors to boost energy production. You will obviously have them blanketed with collectors as well when actually playing. This large network is one of the key parts of the strategy. Notice how the PZ relay on the spore island is enough to connect several other islands all on its own. All extra PZs should be filled with reactors for energy production. I didn't bother filling the PZs on Knife Island because it was pretty  much over at that point since I only had one island left; cleaning up the creeper wouldn't be worth the time.

- Emitter Islands: Given how the networks connected and the strength of the emitters, it was obvious I would be attacking "Final Island" last. Since going back and forth across the map is inefficient, I decided to attack the other islands in a straight path. That's why my attack order starts in one corner of the map and sweeps to the other, to cut down on  unnecessary flight time. This also conveniently left my highest priority targets, the Spore Islands, right at the beginning of the attack queue  8)

- CN Placement: The CN on Main Island is self explanatory. This should be here for the entire game. CN #2  starts off on Secondary Island, but moves to Pistol Island once you've secured it to act as an anchor for the western network since your mobile CN will be leaving it to go to Knife Island. CN #3 will be the mobile CN. It starts on Main Island to give your primary CN backup energy, but as soon as you get your bertha built you will move the mobile CN to each island you're attacking to provide energy on the fly and possibly process AC.

- Small Ore Islands: Each of the small ore asteroids needs only an ore mine, a collector, and a guppy set to "ore" in order to process ore. The guppy will fly ore back to your CN for processing to AC. Some islands will also need a beam to protect them early on; I didn't build those particular islands until I had taken down the spore towers. The two behind your Main Island are protected from spores by the beams on Main Island. The asteroid marked "Guppy Island" was where I parked my guppies when they were on standby and I didn't have anywhere better to park them. It's close to most of the action and safe from creeper.

So now that I've revealed most of the fundamentals underlying my strategy, I'll give a rough play-by-play of how I executed. It's been almost a week since my run so I'm a little foggy, but I'll do my best to recall from the saves I had (which I used to pull some screenshots).

First of all you should grab the 2 spare CN techs. Hopefully you can figure out how to do that yourself. With all 3 CNs unlocked, drop the first on main island and begin a collector network. CN 2 should be ready to drop around this time on Secondary Island. Start another collector network there. When CN 3 is ready it will go on Main Island to reinforce the energy supply there.

On Secondary Island you should build a guppy quickly to nullify the spore tower and place a relay on the PZ. While getting the ore mines built I also made a shield there and sent it to Main Island to help assault the emitter. Meanwhile on Main Island, as soon as the collector network was finished I built a blaster, a forge, a sprayer, and some ore mines. I don't remember the precise order. You'll have to experiment and determine the best precise order yourself  :P

Once those are all built, get a second blaster and a second shield going as well. Also a terp, to make room for the Bertha. Note you'll only need to terp 2 tiles. After that I never used the terp again. At some point in this process you'll also have to build beams, but try to hold off on those for as long as possible so you're not diverting energy needlessly. When the forge is built, spend a point or two on energy then dump the rest into build speed so the Bertha can get up ASAP. You should be able to quickly nullify the emitter with your blasters, sprayer, and shield(s).

By the time the Bertha is built you should be able to have both blasters, both shields, several sprayers, adequate beams, adequate guppies, and ideally set up the two asteroids behind Main Island for ore production. Here is a screenshot right as the last packet gets to my Bertha on my best run. This is at 5 minutes 20 seconds.



So you have your attack force and the Bertha is up and running. At this point I recommend throwing a forge point into energy storage to give a little wiggle room, and a few more points into energy production. After that start pumping ore efficiency. Start flying your units towards the nearest Spore Island before your Bertha finishes loading so they land right as it gets ready to fire. You should easily be able to subdue the island and place a nullifier. When finished nullifying, immediately fill the PZs as shown in my first image to begin a sulf sufficient network and reduce guppy reliance. Every bit of guppy energy saved now can be used for the final 2 islands (the real threats).

As soon as you clear your landing pad on Spore Island #2 drop a relay down so you get hooked into that PZ reactor from the last island. You'll still need guppies, but every drop of energy helps. After nullifying Spore Island #2 quickly drop 2 more PZ reactors. This should cover most basic energy needs.

You'll see a pattern here. After clearing the Spore Islands start with the one I marked #1 and sweep down towards #4. On each island you will fire a Bertha shell right as your units land, and quickly drop a relay down to connect your army to your PZ reactors and save guppy energy. You will soon have spare energy to build more guppies on the spore islands for support.

Upon clearing Pistol Island you will change the guppies on Secondary Island to Ore Guppies and move the CN from Secondary Island forward to Pistol Island to support your energy network there since the other CN will be leaving the network to assault Knife Island. Clear the first emitter on Knife Island ASAP as the PZ from it will allow you to build another relay and connect to the network.

I sent my army ahead to Final Island when the nullifier on Knife Island was a few ammo away from completion just to save a few seconds. No point cleaning up the PZs when almost done. Finally, here is a screenshot right as I am transitioning to Final Island. This is at 12 minutes 41 seconds.



That about wraps it up! Some parting tips:

- Never let energy go to waste. If you are producing spare energy, use it to build or fuel a guppy. Remember that a guppy only requires 25 energy to build, so you can easily make several AC guppies very cheaply. Similarly, each of the ore asteroids only takes 55 energy to set up so you can set up 2 with 1 guppy load. Note that guppies request packets at a VERY high rate when fueling, so keep an eye on them. They can easily cause deficits in your network if you don't pay close attention, which could mean denying ammo to your Bertha. This is VERY BAD! The entire strategy relies on using every bertha shot well.

- Be very hands-on with your Bertha! Make sure to target the spot you will be firing upon well before you actually fire so the Bertha has time to turn and aim before you need to make the shot. Keep it disarmed until you're ready to fire, then quickly arm it and disarm again as soon as it fires to prevent wasted shots. You will be going a little bit over 75 ammo often, but try not to go too far over 75. Weapons request packets at double the rate when they are at less than half ammo, so keeping your Bertha ammo lower means it will receive ammo at a higher rate. If you're playing properly, the main bottleneck for your assault should be Bertha shots so you always want to keep the Bertha firing optimally.

- Use Main Island as an AC processing plant for guppies. Have ore guppies on all the asteroids set to land somewhere on Main Island. You can then build several AC guppies on Main Island to send the processed AC to the battlefield. If your AC guppy is full and you don't have anywhere to use it, get it off the landing pad even if it just means moving it 3 tiles over. Moving it off the landing pad allows you to send more AC to the pad so you're not wasting ore.

- I feel like I'm forgetting a lot of stuff but this is already extremely long so I'll just cut it here. If anyone bothered to read this far and has any questions let me know and I'll try to answer  ;D

[close]

Fantastic Spoiler!  :o 8) :D

[GoodMorning]

I'd thought that double-request-when-half-empty was only CW1 - I feel like I'd have noticed my Berthas filling slower. But, maybe I'm just fooling myself.

[D0m0nik]

A true masterclass. Thanks for sharing this, I love to see how other players go about the game and there are some great tips in here!

[cornucanis]

I'd thought that double-request-when-half-empty was only CW1 - I feel like I'd have noticed my Berthas filling slower. But, maybe I'm just fooling myself.

Interesting.. I did some further testing and it looks like you're right, for the most part. I originally tested with blasters to see if this mechanic was present in CW3 too, and found that blasters indeed request ammo at a higher rate when they're less than half full. Just now, though, I retested and found that blasters seem to be unique in that regard.

Blasters will request an ammo packet every 16 frames when under half ammo or every 32 frames if over half ammo. That was the only one I tested originally. Just now, though, I did some further testing and found that mortars request ammo every 16 frame regardless of current ammo. Berthas will request ammo every 8 frames regardless of current ammo.

Thanks for pointing that out, I guess I was working on incomplete info this whole time  ;D

Edit to add: Also, another potentially helpful bit of info.. Guppy pads request packets every 6 frames when being loaded, so they're even hungrier than Berthas!

[BilboGCL]

Hi,
thanks for this deep insight! I did some things a little different, so I placed my PZ-Bertha on top right spore tower, supplied by two guppies and, probably my major doom, I used a lot of bombers, though PZ bombers but still bombers instead of moving guppy-supplied sprayers... And I didn't care about every bertha-shot...

Greetings from The Shire!

[cornucanis]

Hi,
thanks for this deep insight! I did some things a little different, so I placed my PZ-Bertha on top right spore tower, supplied by two guppies and, probably my major doom, I used a lot of bombers, though PZ bombers but still bombers instead of moving guppy-supplied sprayers... And I didn't care about every bertha-shot...

Greetings from The Shire!

Yes building in the top right asteroid could possibly get your Bertha operational sooner, but it would be much more difficult to keep supplied. I chose to build on main asteroid for ease. I also used bombers on my first run, including PZ bombers, but decided those PZs could be put to better use when I ran it again. I think sprayers are more AC efficient than bombers, but I haven't done any hard testing. Sprayers are also very helpful for protecting your strike force since blasters are limited on this map.

[GoodMorning]

As far as I recall, AC is equally good to either, but bombers tend to drop it into deep Creeper. It's more effective in a thin layer, so Sprayers tend to be more effective.