Custom Map #1895: Power Sink. By: BEric2000

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This topic is for discussion of map #1895: Power Sink


Author: BEric2000
Size: 480x400

Desc:
How do you overcome very solid defenses with limited power resources?

[tfly222]

I see several folks were able to beat this map in under 30 minutes.   What strategy are you using?

[helmetflakes]

I'd settle for beating it in any time! What's the trick? :-]

[toolforger]

This is a really evil map.

Initial annoyance removal:

Spoiler

The HQ can lathe the top ship spawner and the particle bombs.This is essentially a free kill of a spawner, and two flipped bombs that will (unless/until you supply them with energy) create struc for you.

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Securing the initial energy mine:

Spoiler

You need the Disperser for dealing with stunners, and the Versa A ships to discourage the emergents and deal with the particles (the HQ will fend off most but not enough particles, and will die to any emergent).

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Fast fleet buildup:

Spoiler

Resist the temptation to use the gem for energy range increase - you'll be more energy-constrained than space-constrained while building, so go for mine production increase.Build the generator ships first, they will provide additional energy and also create more space in which to build the rest of the fleet.

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General plan:

Spoiler

• Center energy mine for fleet buildup.
• Left energy mines (just to help the next step).
• Left fortress. The defenses are considerably less powerful.
• Right fortress. This is the frustrating part.

• Particles are harmless against your ships but kill omnis quickly.
• Emergents are harmless against your ships but will insta-kill your omni fleet.
• The guns are rapid-fire, extremely long-range, high-speed bullets, deal heavy damage, and resupply in seconds.
  You don't need your cannons against emergents or particles (these will die to missiles and lasers anyway), so put all ship cannons on Defense mode to kill the shots.
  It won't suffice. Expect to lose significant portions of any attack group, particularly once your fleet runs out of energy (no, the generators and the resupply ships that you have won't keep your ships powered for long).

[close]

Assaulting the top-right base is completely frustrating.
You depend on luck as a single emergent can insta-kill your omni group, the cannons will kill your ships as soon as you get too near but you have to get near to give the omnis enough survivability to land.
On top of that, cannons and ship/doppel spawners will lathe each other, so you have to take them out as groups. Given that it's hard to take out even one or two guns, let alone groups of four, and that there's no easy way to identify which are grouped and which aren't, and the doppels which will waltz over your landed omnis, and general difficulty of getting omnis to land without losing most of them, it's really frustrating to see that gun being flipped back and your progress denied.

Retreating is difficult. As soon as your ships turn their backs on the guns, they will lose their engines, become slow, and get shot down.

I gave it a 2/10.The map is well-made, and even fun for the first fortress, but the second fortress is just built for frustration. In particular because the cannons really have every single advantage cranked up to max, or near enough to put you on tryhard mode for every single step of the assault, which means every small mistake or tiny stroke of bad luck will fail the assault, and you have to retreat, regroup, rebuild, which takes multiple minutes for these large ships.
(Okay, you can savescum. Save often, and reset whenever something fails. I hate doing that, and that I'd have to do that contributed to lowering the score.)

An approach that finally worked for me:

Spoiler

• The guns at the top leg are not connected in large-ish clumps like on the bottom leg, so eventually I could clear roughly the top half of the top leg.
• I finally got lucky and could land roughly half of a 32-omni assault; this turned out to be enough to mire enough land so that 16 omnis would survive and keep enough land mired.
• I rebuilt the 16 downed omnis and snuck them in, which would make the mire advance until it ran into ferocious ground cannon fire. The front cannon would periodically mire and unmire.
• Trying to land omnis near enough to any front cannon is again a game of luck, with awfully low chances. It's easier (hah!) to move a power ship near enough to be able to build the omni in place.
• Once one or two front cannons are down, things become much easier: The mire will advance enough to allow some of the top cannons to take out the MK7 ships, so you can move in with your lathe ships and take out the energy mine and the particle spawner (so the energy mine won't be retaken). With power lost, everything becomes just a mop-up.

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You need to micro-manage omnis.
In case you don't know how:
Select the omnis you want to move, shift-click to mark waypoints, normal-click to define the landing points, then click a waypoint to make it follow the mouse and click again to place it.
This technique is essential to sneak omnis past cannon defenses. Missiles are the bane of sneak-in omnis, the best you can do there is to minimize the time spent in missile-defended areas.