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Cogmind => Competitions => Topic started by: zxc on December 21, 2017, 06:12:14 PM

Title: Weekly Seed #106 [Beta 4] [Seed: ThermalTerrainManipulator]
Post by: zxc on December 21, 2017, 06:12:14 PM
This week's seed: ThermalTerrainManipulator



The Weekly Seed is open to anyone, and we encourage you to share your experiences, stories, and tactics over the course of your run.

The rules are as follows:

Good luck and have fun!



HOW TO ENTER A SEED

Press F1 to go to the MENU, select OPTIONS, select Seed, and enter this week's seed:

(https://i.imgur.com/vx1UQW3.png)


Select GAME, select ABORT:

(https://i.imgur.com/cCLoJgu.png)


If you have followed the steps [Manual seed applied: ThermalTerrainManipulator] should display in the log window.

Congratulations on entering the seed, now get in there!
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #106 [Beta 4] [Seed: ThermalTerrainManipulator]
Post by: Kyzrati on December 27, 2017, 11:18:14 PM
I started streaming this seed today. Normally I'd finish the seed in one sitting, but spent a little more time talking through it this time around, and also more time exploring rather than rushing through the first half, so I'll be splitting this one in two. Part 1 is on YouTube (http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odwfouzehps), and I'll be finishing up part 2 hopefully in a stream within the next few days.

I forgot to take screenshots during the run, so I'll just have to describe it without pictorial aids :P

This time my goals were to
Overall it's gone really well so far, almost too well by my standards. By now my runs will have usually had one or two near-death scrapes that I have to creatively work my way out of (gotta love making those comebacks). Well, maybe it's coming at me around the corner, who knows :P. Research is definitely the area that really tests your build.

I'm not sure I've ever even won with an allied Zion (even though technically it's outright easier), probably due to overconfidence I guess. Anyway, perhaps this time will be different.

I started with my standard 4-weapon build that crushes everything. And the new Materials caches were really nice, helping me decide to go with lots of treads and weapons. The first map sure is short now, too, definitely a good thing.

One of the oddities this run was low storage, at least for a combat build. For much of the run I was using two Sml. Storage Units, then finally after several floors got a Medium, then upgraded to Lrg. and Med., and only in the last couple floors had my usual 2x Lrg. Storage Units. Sure took a while! Had to leave behind some good stuff... but at least I haven't gotten into any extended confrontations (alone) yet, so there hasn't been too much strain on backups.

Another somewhat unusual trend was several floors worth of infowar combat build. I've lost them now, but for a while I was running with good sensors, interpreter, and jammer. That often gets me killed, too, having to trade away combat utility slots for non-combat gear, then ending up in fights anyway. But this time I've avoided a number of battles, or at least repositioned to minimize attrition, or had allies to fight for me :)

I've had quite a lot of allies so far, sparking one memorable moment we all saw coming: upon leading my army into a room full of reactors, before I could retreat from the sensor signals I spotted one of my allies caught sight of a target and a firefight broke out. And... yes, stray shots started detonating the surrounding reactors and basically all my friends (and enemies) became piles of smoking scrap. Such is war.

Aside from Zion I've been avoiding branches, but might take Research branches later depending on what happens.

Here's the state we're entering Research with:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not a super amazing build, but I do have three Com. Tesla Bomb Launchers in my inventory that I just picked up. Even one of those things has saved my life many times before, so I'm starting to feel invincible with three. We'll see whether I can make enough stupid mistakes to ruin this run or not :P

Next I'm thinking it'd be nice to get some kind of remote shield and decent energy storage to put these awesome generators to use protecting my allies. (I already passed up many of both types of parts...)
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #106 [Beta 4] [Seed: ThermalTerrainManipulator]
Post by: Kyzrati on December 30, 2017, 01:15:31 AM
Finished! And uploaded (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp8quHX8DMk).

Unfortunately I did not win... This could've easily been a winning run, but I didn't play all that well towards the end where I made some stupid decisions, mostly intentional ones because I thought I could get away with it xD

For this part I picked up where we left off in -3/Research. That floor was pretty uneventful, and I made my way into Armory and had a heck of a lot of allies. We smashed up the place, took some nice gear, and left.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was back in -2 where things went awry.

I reached an area that clearly looked like a thoroughfare, and I said as much and wanted/tried to go around it, but ended up just trying to charge through. Sure enough, patrols started coming in from all directions, but I had a lot of launchers and wasn't afraid to start using them on everything :P
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My other weapons weren't great since I had so many launchers packed in my inventory (seriously this seed is full of awesome launchers, more than I knew what to do with!), so rather than use suboptimal weaponry I even started blasting targets point blank.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I really blew the place up.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Basically I was trying to clear them out because I knew there had to be an exit nearby, somewhere to the east, but they wouldn't leave me in peace to find it...

Eventually relative lack of terminals became a problem since I couldn't call for allies, and I hadn't sought out any good intel on the map, so I just kept blowing up more and more bots until *NNNGGGGG NNNGGGGG NNNGGGGG* High Security was triggered and things were about to get bad!

Spoiler: Late-game spoilers (click to show/hide)
It was a good run, though I think I've once again proven that I can't win when allied with Zion! I end up making adjustments to my build because I have allies, but then sometimes I... don't have allies and end up in trouble. (I tend to play worse when streaming since I don't have as much time or concentration to think everything through, but that's always the case so nothing new there :P)
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #106 [Beta 4] [Seed: ThermalTerrainManipulator]
Post by: nuzcraft on January 08, 2018, 09:31:25 PM
Hey everyone, I had a freaking BLAST with this run! Unlike Kyz, I can only play is short segments, so this was was actually played across 7 sittings and took a whopping 7.21 hours! It was worth the wait because this run put me in the top 20 of the high scores list (as of this writing  ;D). I also streamed this run on my https://www.twitch.tv/nuzcraft (http://Twitch channel) and plan to stream my future runs, though they won't all be with commentary.

From the beginning, this was my first run in Beta 4, and even though I was originally planning a bicycle build, a stash of improved treads in the new -10 lured me back. I took to the mines on both -10 and -9, but I don't remember anything crazy interesting happening, though I may have fought my way through an infestation ;). The first couple factory floors were fruitful and I had a pretty good combat build going. Then, on -6, I entered the lower caves (dun dun DUN).

The first half of the caves was a breeze. I had rockets. Life was good. At one point in the second half of the caves, I tried to skirt by some enemies unseen...and was spotted. No biggie, I can handle them. Then a second patrol came in from a different direction and I was pinned. A combination of poor cover, lots of bad guys, and poor heat management meant I had to make a run for it. Virtually nakey, I found a branch entrance to...DM!

DM was fun and informative, but I was leary of the prox. caves that were to come. Sure enough, prox. caves were rough. At one point I had to choose between trying to skirt past a behemoth or a patrol...I chose the behemoth and it turned out okay  8) Later on, I ran away from progs and patrols and made it back to factory with 65 core. That was quite the adventurous branch :)

I managed to get restocked into a pretty fancy cannon build with some heavy treads and proton cannons, which didn't do us much good when we fell into the waste :'( I swapped over to thermal and kinetic weapons and managed to take out two crushers before a third started the beat down. I somehow managed to out-tread the crushers with a semblance of a cannon build intact, a rare feat indeed.

Back to factory sublevel 5, the restock began and I immediately found an exit (like within 100 turns) Welcome to factory sublevel 4. At this point, the items that made it through the waste were starting to show their wear, and the multitude of hunter squad lead me to move towards a kinetic leg build rockin' coil guns and myomer legs. I found a stash of micro-nuke launchers 8) and took a couple of them (good thing too!) as I then exited into the spooooky upper caves.

The upper caves were quite exciting, as I took advice from bugsniper to nuke patrols liberally. Seriously though, nuclear justice performed excellently in the caves, I can't recommend it enough. I found the exit to the second upper caves and then an exit to a mysterious branch with red walls. What could it be? It was W!

Spoiler: Mr. W (click to show/hide)

Research started out quite fruitful. Bugsniper convinced me to go for a hover build, which made sense since I was struggling in the propulsion department. At this point, my suboptimal mechanics really showed through, and some tips from bugsniper were really helpful in fine tuning my play (they mostly involved positioning in combat, so I guess I should be reading DDarkray's Combat Positioning Guide (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1179195468) ;D Wandering around was going pretty well until I got cornered by a couple patrols and some errors on my part destroyed any cover I had. I ran for it and managed to find a close exit into a brand new branch...testing!

Spoiler: testing (click to show/hide)

In the end, this run was amazing. It was my longest and best run yet, and I learned a lot about the game!

You can check out my full scoresheet here (http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/scores/171220/180104/nuzcraft-180107-215532-0-24287.txt)

I really enjoyed this writeup and will try to do long ones like this in the future (they take a long time though!)

Check me out on twitter (https://twitter.com/nuzcraft), youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChfKrCBdatBePGqB1LsAKuw?view_as=subscriber), and twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/nuzcraft)! I'm try to upload Cogmind vids every M, W, F and am planning on streaming more often!