Custom Map #1416: PaCursor: VolcaNO. By: Heritor

[dmichaelc]

Honestly, Props to QOPLE for making the AI. It's really good. So good that it's nearly impossible to beat legit. It's kinda taken the fun out of PAC and replaced it with tedium.

[GadgetBoy]

the Autopilot AI is brutal, but it can be distracted - the key to getting into the strongholds is the mesh already in-place leading into each stronghold.
My strategy to start out against the ERN portal on the northwest was to build up some creeper, plonk down a couple of emitters and a crimsonator at the base of the mesh, work on increasing the mesh in the base once the creeper's flowed in, and use the remaining erns to wear out the missile launcher until you can take it out, then put an emitter + crimsonator combo inside as soon as there's enough creeper.
Once you've got that, you can then use pretty much the same method against the Rocket and Factory areas, then surround the main base with spores/blobs and wear it down (since the AI will have most likely built a factory inside after you destroy it).

You've got a lot of people saying that the map was terrible. Defending it by saying "'Well, this is how I did it" isn't really the right path here. Listening to suggestions to make the map more tolerable for people who AREN'T THE DEVELOPER WITH ENCYCLOPEDIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE BUILD, and taking their suggestions is the path you should take.

[heritor]

the Autopilot AI is brutal, but it can be distracted - the key to getting into the strongholds is the mesh already in-place leading into each stronghold.
My strategy to start out against the ERN portal on the northwest was to build up some creeper, plonk down a couple of emitters and a crimsonator at the base of the mesh, work on increasing the mesh in the base once the creeper's flowed in, and use the remaining erns to wear out the missile launcher until you can take it out, then put an emitter + crimsonator combo inside as soon as there's enough creeper.
Once you've got that, you can then use pretty much the same method against the Rocket and Factory areas, then surround the main base with spores/blobs and wear it down (since the AI will have most likely built a factory inside after you destroy it).

You've got a lot of people saying that the map was terrible. Defending it by saying "'Well, this is how I did it" isn't really the right path here. Listening to suggestions to make the map more tolerable for people who AREN'T THE DEVELOPER WITH ENCYCLOPEDIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE BUILD, and taking their suggestions is the path you should take.

Palpatine213 stated they were curious as to the intended method to beat the map - which I posted.

Whilst I do read and listen to comments, and generally take them on board if I feel they're valid, at its' core when someone creates a map, they do so because it's something they want to play. Nobody is forcing you to play a map you don't like.

I wanted to play this map, so I made this map (although ironically, this is the first map where I made a change from my most preferred style, deactivating the Cursor *because* people were saying PaCursor wasn't as good). I wanted to play PaC with Cursor, so I made those maps. I wanted to play FPS with bridges, so I made those maps. I wanted to see what Sleeper would be like in CW4, so I'm working on that, and if I think of any other concepts I'd like to play that don't exist? I'll make those maps.

I strongly encourage you to create maps that you enjoy - after all, this isn't a job, this is something we all do for fun, and attacking content creators because they don't create something you like isn't the path you should take.

[BrokenLifeCycle]

I just don't get it. My launchers keep yeeting its skimmers north before turning, making it waste time heading towards its objective and getting sniped literally outside the map. WHY?! Half of my pushes were stopped because of this issue.

The core problem of all of these maps with Autopilot is literally the lack of control on our end. I have no ability to control the caches to hold and then release when I want it to. I have no ability to coordinate my launchers. The terrain becomes a PAC user's worst nightmare because Creeper is a fluid that doesn't want to go up a hill. Worse yet, each tower takes up a huge amount of flat space, making the terrain issue a double whammy where you can only take a predetermined path that's already lined with guns.

The normal version of PAC towers is good against static enemies, but against a dynamic one like Autopilot, it's setting up users for failure as they fight not only the AI but their own units working against them.

[Dextorplays]

Fun Idea and I found the AI intense and refreshing.  Creeper Cap was the only downside.  I tried for ten hours to take the map without the Launcher cheese.  I was able to take all of the map except the base.  The creeper cap prevented an advance to the height of the base.  Finally, just switched to mass launchers and ended the game in a couple minutes.  I like to end with a dominated map covered in creep and the inability to do this because of an arbitrary cap on creep was disappointing.

[TheProScout]

I nearly spend 5 full hours on this map... what a slug fest.
I recently was replaying all Cursor maps and this one was one of my unfinished ones, i restarted from scratch.

After about an hour in i kinda got stuck, and i fortunately read about the cheese on these forums for this map.
However i did not wanted to make it to easy on myself.

I could deal with the long term slugfest, but my god, after a while i had isolated the 4 corners and there were 4 smaller islands i couldnt get rid off.
The main problem for me was the amount of teleporters the brutal ai build....

No really, at one point EACH of those 8 outposts had a minimum of 5 to 6 teleporters, it was crazy....
on this image there are 11 teleporters. and this was just 1 small patch of land... (and i had to deal with 7 more patches of land like this ).


I then decided that i deleted all the Extra teleporters the AI build, and left 1 teleporter per outpost... so it was still connected to its main base. but without the crazyness

It was still a long struggle, but this made it a bit more bareable.

Usally i prefer to brute force my way on pac maps with just emitters, normally i prefer to play without launchers and stashes.
but this map was just impossible to do without skimmers/spores/blobs.... (I kinda felt bad everytime i used them, like the Skimmers//Spores/Blobs was the Cheese, while it was not.)