Custom Map #1630: The Air Sac Nexus. By: Narcosis

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This topic is for discussion of map #1630: The Air Sac Nexus


Author: Narcosis
Size: 250x250

[Ionizer]

Fun map, a long and hard path to eventual victory.

But I was unable to get the crimson to decay.  I Nullified all 5 Air Sac Cauldrons but nothing happened.  Had to finish the game fighting the crimson. Screenshot below.

Spoiler

[close]

[CS Z]

I posted a 39 minute time.  I didn't try to suppress/overload everything since the only objective is to eliminate the air sacs.  I cleared about 1/3rd of the map.  I was hurting for energy the entire time.  I was a tad annoyed that the ERN portal could be built but there are no ERNs.

I'd love to know how to do the 6 minute cheese (Hypnotic22 and Fireswamp both posted very low times).  I assume it has to do with starting in the middle and somehow getting enough snipers up to prevent any crimson from forming, then suppressing the spore launcher from releasing eggs, and then getting enough Redon to destroy the air sacs.  I tried starting in the middle on my first attempt but that didn't go so well after a couple of minutes.  Hypnotic and Fire are in a whole other league though.  So even if they showed how to do it, I'd wager that replicating their runs would be exceptionally difficult.

Not sure why "Auri's FPS tools" CPACK is in this map.  FPS mode keybindings don't work, so maybe just a randomly/accidentally included CPACK?

[Durikkan]

Not sure why "Auri's FPS tools" CPACK is in this map.  FPS mode keybindings don't work, so maybe just a randomly/accidentally included CPACK?

Yeah that's bizarre.  They did strip out some the files so that it doesn't function. (though it's still doing some stuff in the background, but nothing that's visible to the player or in any way effects the map)  Maybe they were using it to pull code examples from and didn't delete it afterwards? 

[Fireswamp]

I'd love to know how to do the 6 minute cheese (Hypnotic22 and Fireswamp both posted very low times).  I assume it has to do with starting in the middle and somehow getting enough snipers up to prevent any crimson from forming, then suppressing the spore launcher from releasing eggs, and then getting enough Redon to destroy the air sacs.  I tried starting in the middle on my first attempt but that didn't go so well after a couple of minutes.  Hypnotic and Fire are in a whole other league though.  So even if they showed how to do it, I'd wager that replicating their runs would be exceptionally difficult.

I might be remembering Hypnotic's strategy on this one incorrectly, but IIRC we actually had very different strategies for this; Hypnotic just ignored everything else and pushed into the middle in that time and I just dropped missiles into the creeper next to the spore tower.  I can only speak for my strategy but it had a lot of difficulties, notably the lack of ERNs meant keeping the air sacs low enough to be in range of the missiles was difficult.

[Narcosis]

But I was unable to get the crimson to decay.  I Nullified all 5 Air Sac Cauldrons but nothing happened.  Had to finish the game fighting the crimson. Screenshot below.

Spoiler

[close]

that's odd, i did a lot of testing and the only time it broke was when a cauldron was overloaded. i'm sorry that happened and i have no clue why it didn't work

Not sure why "Auri's FPS tools" CPACK is in this map.  FPS mode keybindings don't work, so maybe just a randomly/accidentally included CPACK?

Yeah that's bizarre.  They did strip out some the files so that it doesn't function. (though it's still doing some stuff in the background, but nothing that's visible to the player or in any way effects the map)  Maybe they were using it to pull code examples from and didn't delete it afterwards? 

it's for the decrimson script. i did delete some stuff but was worried that i might somehow break the decrimson script if i did any more (co-dependent scripts are a thing... I think)

I was hurting for energy the entire time.  I was a tad annoyed that the ERN portal could be built but there are no ERNs.

yeah, disabling the ERN portal totally slipped my mind so that's my fault. I did notice that energy was an issue which is i included so much foliage(towers produce much more energy when in foliage) and resource spaces. if you're still short on energy it's likely from snipers shooting at glorbs. what i do is get halfway up the map, where the mesh is close to the edge of the map, bring a bunch of snipers and set one or two of them to not shoot glorbs(so that they'll focus on forbs) and hold my position for two or three minutes after which the forbs numbers are greatly reduced (their spawn interval is longer than normal) and the energy drain from snipers greatly diminishes.

  I can only speak for my strategy but it had a lot of difficulties, notably the lack of ERNs meant keeping the air sacs low enough to be in range of the missiles was difficult.

that's why i had the ADA inform you that you'll need to terraform. As for the lack of ERNs it's because that in order to account for ERN powered missiles i would have had to make the crimson area significantly larger, but if i made the decrimson script affect any larger an area then it would cause large lag spikes whenever it triggered. I tried to compensate by making the emitters much weaker than normal.

This map was largely to show off the cool tentacle effect of the initial air sacs which i'm pretty sure is a bug since 90% of the time they'll drop the glorbs the instant they grow them. I'm hoping Knuckle Cracker will make it a feature. I think I'll just focus on improving the laser script(listed as "Air Sac attack" in this map) in my future maps