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cw4:cmod:docs:9a94ae07-3fa0-429a-98db-025c4973c21d

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[VPAC - Vertu's Creeper Buildings] Advanced Emitter

The Advanced Emitter is by far one of the most complex VWC units among the project, featuring advanced behavior for something seemingly simple as an emitter. The purpose of the Advanced Emitter was to combat the issue of thresholds where the Rift Lab user would be held back until they reached a critical mass where it was all over before anything was lost on the side of the Creeper. When Creeper is rapidly destroyed on the map, the Advanced Emitter boosts emission rate in hopes to compensate for the loss.
You may be wondering why it doesn't always emit at max emission, this is because there are actual disadvantages for emitting so much Creeper from one emitter. Mainly bottleneck holds where all the Creeper gets stuck in the area of the Advanced Emitter and not the entire map due to a hard hold, leaving the other areas left to dry out.
The intent of the Advanced Emitter is to keep the pressure on the Rift Lab user from start to finish.
There is also the stronger reason of <DATA_EXPUNGED>.

Standard CW4 stats

There is no standard stats for a non-VPAC mission for the Advanced Emitter. Only the map maker will know as they are who defined the stats of the Advanced Emitter. However, the VPAC stats are not the default stats so swapping from VPAC to Creeper World, all you need to do is press the red X in a red circle. Swapping from Creeper World to VPAC however involves the VPAC stats below.

VPAC stats

  • Base Emission: 75.0
  • Uses 3 power.
  • Reclaim multiplier: 9.5x
  • Maximum emission at 15% of total Creeper.
  • Can be placed on uneven terrain and on void.
  • Very easy to activate (only needs a 3×3 area of Creep to activate rather than a 5×5 area for the Emitter Base.
  • Can't be destroyed by Strategic Missiles from the SML.
  • An indirect countermeasure to enemy Strategic Missiles from the SML though Stat Missiles can destroy basic Emitters and other units so the CSMD/Anti Nuke is still the only proper countermeasure.
  • Good for ensuring mesh doesn't bleed you out.
  • Draws artillery fire.
  • CAN BE NULLIFIED.
  • IMPERVIOUS TO TRADITIONAL DAMAGE.

How the Creeper reclaim works

When an Advanced Emitter is placed and active, it records how much total Creeper is on the map and remembers that number, constantly updating it if the total amount exceeds the previous “record”. When Creeper falls below that recorded number, the Advanced Emitter begins to emit more Creep. When the current Creeper is only 15% of the recorded total Creeper, the Advanced Emitter will be at max emission rate of 712.5/0.5sec in a VPAC mission.
:NOTE: This is not based on Creeper coverage unlike the Reclaim Objective. This is also completely liable to change by the map maker.

MVerse considered (original purpose of the Advanced Emitter)

When in MVerse, due to how MVerse works, the Advanced Emitter will be cloned. This means there will be multiple Advanced Emitters in a single place emitting Creep. So based on the number of players, the display of the Advanced Emitter will scale to be more accurate. So if there are 2 players, when a single Adv.Emitter emits 75, it will display as 150. Advanced Emitters will not create an MVerse ghost but the clone will still be there so this is necessary to convey accurate information.

Within the Advanced Emitter, you can change how much each player counts towards emission by ratios. A ratio of 1 means every player increases Emission by the number of players multiplicatively. Less than 1 is useful as there is a limited amount of space for towers to fire at Creep. So although mathematically you will want a 1:1 scale of emission based on # of players, as they have the same concept for their resources, including energy, the actual practice of this will be less than a 1:1 ratio due to external factors like limited range and space for weapons.

Extra note: Technically everything is MVerse compatible due to how MVerse works. No, seriously, you can play my, (Vertu), VPAC maps in MVerse and probably any other map. Everything will duplicate to X amount of players and each player has their own VPAC operating for them. KnuckleKracker really did a great job in making MVerse so it works in as many situations as possible. If, however, something does not seem to be working, just tell me, (Vertu). Message me on the Forums or @ me on the CW4 Discord in MapMakingChatter.

Fun fact

The CW4 Emitter emits onto 8 cells although it is a 3×3 unit (9 cells). It randomly picks one of the 9 cells to not place Creeper on, presumably to add a bit of variance in emission though the result is mostly meaningless. This made replicating the vanilla Emitter in the Advanced Emitter very annoying as the math never lined up until this was discovered during its development.


VPAC CPACKs download location.
VPAC Wiki Page
Vertu's Creeper Buildings
Custom CPACKs & Units
Index

cw4/cmod/docs/9a94ae07-3fa0-429a-98db-025c4973c21d.txt · Last modified: 2023/02/06 08:19 by Vertu