ChopRaider walkthru with images

[Karsten75]

Someone asked. I know it's possible to do this without SAMS, but I went the easy way.

Phase 1 (fail)


Of utmost importance in my strategy is to get a mortar within reach of the pool with the artifact in it. Creeper tend to flow into that pool and if you can bomb it with a mortar, it slows all flow on the rest of the map to manageable proportions. In this first picture I tried relocating Odin City nearer to the critical  point, but the time that Odin City is in transit delays building connectors too much.

Phase 1 (success)


Leaving Odin City in place and building out the two collector lines was a successful strategy. Be prepared to lose the outlying collectors, cince it is too expensive resource-wise to defend them. Instead, concentrate on building enough SAMS and reactors to power them The waves oa aerial spores are dense than in any other map and you need multiple SAMS to counter the incoming waves. Note that most spores originate in the North-eastern quadrant, and seem to generally travel to the south-western quadrant. So as you advance your line of collectors, move your SAMS to a diagonal line running from north-west to south-east.

Phase 2


Given the small area that can be secured, it is important to build enough reactors to provide steady firing power to your SAMS (many of them have to reload and fire twice in the same wave of spores. Also, a few drones will serve to bomb the emitter and contain it while also drying out the spread-out creeper on the rest  of the map. This phase takes some time, but once you have the mortar in operation and sufficient SAMS to beat back the aerial spores you are in no real danger of losing anymore.

Phase 3


After your drones start hammering the emitter, it's all over. Expand,  supply lines to the ridge near the emitter and cap off the emitter by positioning a blaster within firing range. Build additional collectors and relays to connect all the totems. Bon voyage!

[Xylnalya]

While it's a nice idea and it obviously worked in your playthrough, I doubt it'd be of much use or could be considered a walkthrough at all - There's no text and the buildings between 'phase' one and two show that you both moved the city and lost quite a few buildings. Despite that, it's a miracle for me how or with what you've spend ten minutes between 'phase' three and four?
I doubt this'd be of any use to someone who's looking for a ChopRaider walkthrough. The gametime of 23 minutes is hardly explained with four pictures, especially since half the time's cut out between the last two 'phases'.

[Karsten75]

Rats, you're right. I got pics mixed up. Soz. I'll add some explanation.

[Siccles]

i think that even if you completly documented this walkthrough it wouldn`t do any player any good, because it advocates some pretty bad energy management (like in the 1st picture building everything at once) which will only support bad habits

[Karsten75]

i think that even if you completly documented this walkthrough it wouldn`t do any player any good, because it advocates some pretty bad energy management (like in the 1st picture building everything at once) which will only support bad habits

No, since the collectors are in straight lines, it is equivalnet to building one at a time, until the collector lines are complted, then you start building weapons. It actually works out pretty well in most battles that I have fought and I've completed all the battles in the regular game as well as a fair number of the custom maps created by other players.

I study the map and creeper flow and then lay out the collectors in advance. Often I lay out more collectors than I can actually build, since there is no penalty energy-wise if the build process hasn't started.

But you know what? feel free to post your own. I am always open to learning from better players.

[Xylnalya]

But I don't think it'd work out the way you did. Perhaps the energy management was the reason for the ground you lost, but on the first screen you were already building five buildings with just three built collectors and another three are just about to come into the queue. I wouldn't recommend doing that, rather two, a maximum of three buildings perhaps to keep up the speed.

[Siccles]

usually you can go by the rule of thumb to only build 1 building per energypoint you have at the same time (minus ammunition etc) because of the 20 energy at the beginning you can directly build 2 collectors in the beginning, but then only 1 at a time till you can start a second one without making the 1st one slower.

edit: and the reactor in the beginning makes absolutly no sense at all, collectors are far more efficient as long as you can still advance.

[Karsten75]

usually you can go by the rule of thumb to only build 1 building per energypoint you have at the same time (minus ammunition etc) because of the 20 energy at the beginning you can directly build 2 collectors in the beginning, but then only 1 at a time till you can start a second one without making the 1st one slower.

edit: and the reactor in the beginning makes absolutly no sense at all, collectors are far more efficient as long as you can still advance.

As I said, that was a fail.

I was planning to spend the 40 units to get a reactor up. If you read the discussion about reactors, one of them is worth .3 energy, whereas a collector can hardly get over .18 energy optimally

Having said that, there is still something wrong with the pictures. I must have taken screenshots at different battles, since the reactors at the bottom left is different.

I think in retrospect maybe best if this thread get deleted and I'll repost a better set of images when I get around to playing that level again.

[Siccles]

per energypoint collectors are far more efficient than reactors, because they cost less

[Karsten75]

per energypoint collectors are far more efficient than reactors, because they cost less

Read this:

Each green square produces a whopping 0.004 energy!  (Doesn't sound like much does it)
An optimal collector will cover 45 squares for a total of 0.18 energy. (Those little squares add up fast).

So:
Reactor cost: 40
Reactor production: 0.3

Collector Cost: 10
Collector production (optimal): 0.18

So if you get optimal collector spacing you can get .72 from 4 collectors (the cost of one reactor). However, connected collectors cannot be spaced optimally. Each collector connected to another collector overlaps almost 50% of green space. So I would hazard that a series of 4 connected collectors only get in the region of .4 energy, which is a much smaller advantage than the one reactor.

Additionally, they cover more territory that needs to be defended. You can put about 6 reactors in the same space farmed by one collector for a much lower protection cost if you have to build SAMS. Yes, it takes longer, but it is a viable option.

[Siccles]

about the defending more ground thing, if you play for highscores (like me) then you will try to never ever defend any ground, and just completly rush the totems or cap off the emitters with a all-in drop.
If that drop fails ive pretty much lost the game anyway, so i dont care that I have more space to defend, I just try to get as much energy as fast as possible.

And another thing you have to realise is, that while the reactor only starts producing energy once it is finished, the 4 collectors (if build 1 at a time) will start producing energy after each of them is build (meaning that even if a reactor would produce more than 4 well-placed collectors (which it doesnot) the 4 collectors would still be more effective for the 1st minute or so (which is all that matters if you play for highscores)).

[Aurzel]

collectors are the way to go for the high score, reactors take too long to get your economy up except for maps where you really need it

[Kalistos]

Heh, i won this map in 9697 score. 1:52 minutes. Check Hich Score Leaderboard ^^)

[SPIFFEN]

Heh, i won this map in 9697 score. 1:52 minutes. Check Hich Score Leaderboard ^^)

Nice , but can you show us that you did'nt cheat ?

[Kalistos]

I dont know anyone cheat in this game... And didnt use it in all maps in creeper world... 5 days ago 1 take 1 place in Leaderboard, but now "tomas visagalis" won me. Who is it? And how he can make so hich Score in hard maps?
And i sow that Siccles made 10000 scores in map "Crux".
How it can be? What the cheats are there in game?