Day 17: Trickery

[Grauniad]

OK, not a help thread, more a request for discussion from those who beat it.

On the upper layer of Creeper (the one  that sends the upward tentacles), I have tried a variety of weapons, with varying success. What bothers me is that none of my strategies seem adequately quick - more a slow job of attrition.

Blasters seem to do an adequate, but slow job of containing the tentacles, while a few launchers can deplete the pool a tad quicker.  It seems that some of the tentacles can be pushed back with a repulsor, but others seem too strong and I've lost a few repulsors in that strategy.

I've also used anti-creeper to dilute some of the creeper, but again, this seems slow and laborious.

The source spots for feeding creeper upward seem to be fairly high in the creeper pool, so I'm guessing if I can get the creeper away from there faster, the tentacles will disappear quicker - that seems to call for repulsors, but their energy use is too much in the early stage.

What do others do?

[Sqaz]

I first used Anti-Creeper which can effectively block the tentacles and then used launchers and blasters to clear the pool.
Makers are very useful here as you have enough ore and you only need two or three to block all tentacles.

[ontheworld]

shields and launchers where my answer

[Kithros]

When I've done it I always start by putting reactors everywhere I can (other than places that will get hit of course), and then i get 3 creeper makers (on 4x production, you'll want to get the ore rigs and the  remnants pretty quickly), once they get into position (1 creeper maker for every 2 tentacles) they almost completely stop the tentacles from moving forward, and then I make launchers with whatever energy I have left after that. After 3 or 4 launchers I tend to get a few blasters to get rid of the tentacles a bit faster so I can build more reactors. The key thing about makers here is that they use no energy, and early on there is very little space to build reactors to support mass blasters. With the technytes I pick building cost and reactor efficiency, and I don't pick up the holocube until all the creeper makers are up.

[Grauniad]

The ore strategy seems to deplete my ore reserves rather quickly. And I'd like to reserve ore for later in that map.

What time do you achieve breakthrough on that first pool? Just using blasters, launchers and one ore maker gives me about 9 minutes, which is a tad on the slow side.

[Kithros]

Well, I can't remember exactly when I get through that part, but I've finished the entire map in under 12 minutes - I just use shields instead of friendly creeper later on.

[Ebon Heart]

If you can get a nice pool of anti creeper built up, you should be able to disarm the makers for later use, then while the makers hold the creeper back, use blasters and launchers to clear the pool, so the tentacles will disappear.

[Sqaz]

While trying an approach with shields and Launcher I got 4:30 in my first try (at the end I also used two repulsors though, but I'm not sure if those were necessairy). Maybe I can improve that.

[Grauniad]

you put a shield on each of the openings (fissures)? How long did that last?

[Sqaz]

you put a shield on each of the openings (fissures)? How long did that last?

Long, the terrain already needs some time to decay, and shields are quite strong.
Atleast it lasted long enough for me to build all reactors, three mortars and then 2 repulsors to keep the now almost decayed shields from collapsing so I could build one beneath it (only now I came to the idea that building a shield above is just as effective).

Two shields would certainly give you enough time, and for the hardest decayable terrain one shield will do.


Edit: The shield can survive about 2:15 and the easiest decayable terrain about 30 seconds.

[Grauniad]

you put a shield on each of the openings (fissures)? How long did that last?

Long, the terrain already needs some time to decay, and shields are quite strong.
Atleast it lasted long enough for me to build all reactors, three mortars and then 2 repulsors to keep the now almost decayed shields from collapsing so I could build one beneath it (only now I came to the idea that building a shield above is just as effective).

Two shields would certainly give you enough time, and for the hardest decayable terrain one shield will do.


Edit: The shield can survive about 2:15 and the easiest decayable terrain about 30 seconds.

That doesn't seem to work for me (I tested this also with medium repulsors)

Spoiler

[close]

See the two leftmost openings? The repulsors are not strong enough to push back the creeper. So I don't see how your strategy pans out. Not saying it can't be done, just saying I don't see how to do it.

[ontheworld]

I built more shields in the way of the tentacles

[Sqaz]

That doesn't seem to work for me (I tested this also with medium repulsors)

Could very well be, I only build repulsors after already thining the creeper out a bit with launcher, as you have plenty of time provided by those shields.

[Ebon Heart]

I just built 3 makers right away, then used blasters to keep the tentacles from getting too far, and used launchers to destroy the pit... you can pretty much just ignore the tentacles for a while, all they really do is look scary.

[thepenguin]

oh, those are tentacles? I always thought they were trees

anyway, the LS just flies through them

on-topic:

I always found the best place for a maker to be on top of a tree / nested in branches