canonical link to CPACK - where to get the author-maintained version

The CSM Emitters CPACK is the core of CSM, a game mode made popular in Creeper World 3. In CSMs all of your usual offensive options are disabled, you need to rely on terrain manipulation to direct Creeper and Anticreeper flow to win the map. Typically starting with a small amount of weak Anticreeper emitters, you manipulate the terrain to capture more and more emitters, power towers and other structures on the map. The standard victory condition is the conversion or destruction of all enemy emitters.

CSM is a gamemode designed around directing anticreeper flow to capture enemy emitters, power towers and other powerful units around the map. The first thing you will notice is a complete lack of available weapons to fight against this creeper; you instead need to direct anticreeper around the map to capture objectives with which you can assault more dangerous enemies.

Because of the large levels of creeper & anticreeper that are present in CSM, it is recommended that you plan in 'Top Down' view, which can be enabled with a button in the bottom right of your UI.

Creeper/anticreeper flow on this map has been adjusted, in general they both flow faster but more importantly they are significantly more affected by terrain height. Every level of terrain corresponds to 100 levels of creeper/anticreeper instead of the default 1. This means that walling off areas of the map is very effective at stopping the creeper from pushing into your territory.

Your primary method of terraforming is the Torp, or if you don't care for technical details just pretend it is a normal Terp. You can designate areas to be terraformed as normal, but I have a warning: be careful what walls you knock down, you cannot terraform tiles with creeper on them, so if you knock down a wall to an area that is too much for you to handle, it can be difficult, if not impossible to wall it back up. As a side note, I believe all bugs with the Torp have been dealt with, but if there are any I have missed, the Custom0 hotkey (which can be set in the controls menu) should reset terraforming/terrainoverride flags to their correct values.

The core units of CSM are the 4 emitter types and the power tower; you win when all enemy emitters are either destroyed or captured.

Anticreeper Emitters constantly produce anticreeper and cannot be destroyed by normal means.

Flip Emitters tend to always start as enemy Flip Emitters, which produce creeper, but flip to friendly Flip Emitters, which produce anticreeper, when exposed to sufficient levels of anticreeper. Note that Flip Emitters can flip back to producing creeper if they are exposed to sufficient levels of creeper.

Creeper Emitters constantly produce creeper and will die when exposed to anticreeper. Creeper Emitters will generate creeper and an ERN when destroy.

Boss Emitters work similarly to Creeper Emitters, but have multiple lives (producing creeper when each life is lost) and can drastically increase the creeper production of emitters in a small radius around itself.

Power Towers tend to start as inactive Power Towers, which have no function, but will turn to active Power Towers when exposed to sufficient levels of anticreeper. Active Power Towers increase the anticreeper production of ALL friendly emitters on the map.

If you mouseover the emitters a text popup should give you unit stats in the form “X/Y every Z”; this is the units current production. The X in this equation is the amount of creeper or anticreeper produced every production cycle, negative for anticreeper, positive for creeper. The Y in the equation is the cap for the emitters production, the emitter will not add creeper or anticreeper above this level. The Z in the equation is the production delay in frames; CW4 runs at 30 game ticks per second, so if the production delay is 30, the emitter produces once every second, and if the production delay is 15, it produces twice every second.

Stargates and their support units are extremely common in CSM and serve as the primary way to transfer creeper or anticreeper across the map. Stargates on the same network will average out the amount of creeper/anticreeper between all of them twice per second. As an example, if you have 3 stargates on the same network, with 10 anticreeper, 5 creeper, and 8 creeper respectively, the stargates will all have (-10+5+8)/3=1 creeper on their tiles after the stargates trigger.

The main networks are described by the color of the stargates rings, seen below. In general, all red stargates are on one network, all green stargates are on a different network and so on.

There are 2 ways to manipulate what network a stargate is attached to, the first is the Stargate Overrider. The Stargate Overriders each have their own network, generally separate to the colored networks, and any Stargate with the Stargate Overrider placed on it will be removed from its normal network and added to the Overriders network. Overriders only function when placed on a stargate.

The Stargate Blocker works similarly to a Stargate Overrider, with the exception that the Stargate blocker does not connect the stargate to any network whatsoever.

Bridges are another method of directing creeper/anticreeper flow, consisting of 2 units, the Bridges themselves and the Bridge Controllers.

Bridges and Bridge Controllers have their networks labelled, controllers will toggle bridges of that network AND bridges of the negative of that network. So a Bridge Controller labelled 5 will toggle all bridges with labels 5 or -5; the difference between these networks is that bridges on a negative network will be on when the corresponding positive network bridges are off and vice versa.

Bridge Controllers can only be used if they are enabled, which can be identified with the red sphere on the unit turning green; a Bridge Controller will be enabled when there is suffiicent anticreeper underneath it. When a Bridge Controller is enabled, all Bridges corresponding to that controller can be flipped by clicking the “Flip Bridges” button in the top left UI with the controller selected.

Enabled bridges will have normal terrain appear beneath them; when a bridge is disabled the terrain is switched for void terrain, preventing creeper/anticreeper flow.

Absorbers are a unit that absorb anticreeper placed underneath them, increasing their storage until they are full. When the absorber is full it will destroy itself and replace itself with either Nothing, a Power Tower, or an Anticreeper Emitter. The current and max storage is shown over the unit, and the result can be seen in the unit UI in thte top left with the unit selected.

Orbitals are a set of very powerful abilities that use orbital points similar to orbitals in the base game. There are 5 types of orbitals, all of which can be deployed from the AIR tab of the top left UI menu. The cost of these units is shown in the top left of the unit icon in that menu, and your current number of available orbitals is shown in the top centre.

Orbitals are obtained the same way as with the base game, by building rockets and feeding the rocket pad liftic. CSM does adjust the cost of building the rocket from the usual 500 down to only 200; the cost of individual rockets currently are not adjusted and require 200 liftic per orbital. There also exist orbital pickups, which can be collected by connecting to them with your rift lab, granting 1 orbital upon collection.

To use an Orbital, select and place the unit as you would to build any other unit; note that these units can be placed anywhere on the map, including in void, in creeper and on top of existing units.

The 5 orbitals and their descriptions are as follows:

• The Suppress orbital halves creeper production of all enemy emitters in a 10 block radius for 20 seconds.
• The Augment orbital increases anticreeper production of all friendly emitters by 75% in a 10 block radius for 20 seconds.
• The Wall orbital generates walls in a circle of radius 10 for 30 seconds.
• The Terrain orbital converts all unoccupied void in a 7×7 square to level 1 terrain.
• The Drain orbital reduces the creeper level within 8 blocks by 5%, 3 times per second for 10 seconds.

The build limit of 1 shown in the UI can be ignored, that simply exists to prevent click-dragging from placing multiple orbitals on accident. If more orbitals than can be afforded are placed on the same frame only some of the placed orbitals will activate.

• The Anticreeper Emitter is an emitter that produces Anticreeper.
• The Creeper Emitter is an emitter that produces Creeper. The Creeper emitter has health and takes damage if in contact with Anticreeper. Creeper Emitters deposit a large amount of Creeper and an ERN when killed.
• The Flip Emitter is an emitter that can produce either Creeper or Anticreeper. If Creeper or Anticreeper is present under the Flip emitter in sufficient quantity, it will switch to producing that.
• The Power Tower is a map structure that increases the production of all Anticreeper Emitters and Flip Emitters producing Anticreeper on the map. When sufficient Anticreeper is present underneath the tower it will increase the production of your emitters. Note that this increase is set per emitter, so capturing a Power Tower can have different effects on different emitters.
• The Boss Emitter is a Creeper Emitter that multiplies the production of all Creeper Emitters and Flip Emitters producing Creeper in its range. The Boss Emitter has multiple lives and deposits creeper whenever it loses a life.

As of the time writing this page, CSM heavily makes use of 4 other CPACKs; Torps, Stargates, CSM Orbitals and CSM Secondary Units.

The Torps CPACK is a mod for causing terrain to be significantly higher for the purposes of Creeper/Anticreeper flow. CSM typically uses a height of 100, that is 100 layers of Creeper or Anticreeper correspond to 1 terrain height. Because this adjustment cannot be done automatically, anything that adjusts terrain needs to adjust the Terrain Override as well. This is why the Terp unit has been replaced by the Torp.

The Torps CPACK also includes a command for resetting/recalculating the Terrain override and terraforming errors. If your Torps refuse to terraform certain tile(s), the Custom0 hotkey should fix the issue.

The Stargates CPACK was originally created by Auri and has been expanded to include 3 units (plus 1) as of the time of writing. These 3 units are the Stargate, the Stargate Blocker, and the Stargate Overrider. The Stargate is a unit for distributing Creeper/Anticreeper around the map; twice a second the Creeper/Anticreeper level of all Stargates in each network will be set to their average Creeper/Anticreeper levels. Practically this means that all Stargates on the same network can be considered adjacent for the purposes of Creeper/Anticreeper flow. A stargates colour indicates what network it is on unless otherwise overridden; so all Stargates with a yellow ring are on the same network.

The remaining 2 units are units that override a Stargates network if placed on a Stargate. The Stargate Blocker is a unit that can be placed on top of a Stargate to remove that Stargate from its network. The Stargate Overrider, sometimes referred to as Numbered Stargates, is a unit that temporarily changes the network of a Stargate to a network not associated with any colour. If you have two (or more) Stargate Overriders with the same number, any stargates they are attached to will be on the same network, regardless of their colour beforehand.

The CSM Orbitals CPACK is what adds and governs the use of a set of custom orbital weapons. The CPACK prevents use of normal orbitals and adds a set of 5 orbitals to the Air build tab. These orbitals are designed for use in CSM, with two of which being functionless without CSM Emitters.

The CPACK obtains orbitals by converting normal orbitals to a global variable, which are consumed upon activation of the custom orbital units. There also exists an orbital pickup unit, which when connected to grants a number of orbitals.

This CPACK is the location of CSM units that do not need an entire CPACK to themselves. At the time of writing the CPACK contains Superreactors, Bridges, Bridge Controllers and the Absorber.

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