Grid Sage Forums

Cogmind => Competitions => Topic started by: zxc on December 01, 2015, 04:01:42 AM

Title: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: zxc on December 01, 2015, 04:01:42 AM
\m/

This week's seed: Heavy Metal


The Weekly Seed is open to anyone. High scores are not the only feature of the runs and the main reason for putting this together is to share our experiences, stories, and tactics over the course of your run.

Rules are as follows:
(https://i.imgur.com/Sip9JKj.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/Ct1hdZA.png)




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: Heavy Metal] should display in the log window.

Congratulations on entering the seed, now get in there!
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Kyzrati on December 03, 2015, 05:37:05 AM
I think I'll skip streaming this week since my wife's been sick for the past week and I need to use as much time as possible to keep development on schedule, having had to allocate time elsewhere for a while now :(

I'll probably still run the seed gauntlet myself, though, and I'm sure it'll be awesome and I'll wish I was streaming it ::)
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: zill on December 03, 2015, 02:06:41 PM
I got a score of 7775, made it to -5.  I found a lot of good stuff for a stealth run, I may play the seed again and try that instead of combat.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Decker on December 05, 2015, 03:10:55 PM
I had some big plans for this seed. Several of my combat runs lately ended ignominiously on the second floor of Research. I noticed a common pattern. My stash of exotic items - targetting computers, armors, force fields - would be long gone by the time I entered the second floor of Reseach, leaving me with useless utility slots.

Clearly, I needed to trim more fat from my combat build. So I did. This was my plan for -2.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That was the plan, anyway. I got in serious trouble on -5. I had to fight several ARCs, the alert level went up, and those bastard programmers/scouts just wouldn't lend me their hover units! I was forced back on legs, which is really dangerous in those circumstances.

Still, not everything was bleak. I had found several HCP and large storage units, so I had a high inventory from only 4 storage units. I also had an experimental terrain processor and an improved terrain scanner, plus some good hackware. I swapped on the sensor, interpreter, processor and scanner. This is an highly effective combination!

I mapped the place, hacked, followed the countour of the map, observed the direction of incoming ARCs. Nu-uh, no exit for me. At 300 HP, I cut my losses, and went down a chute I had spotted earlier with only 3 hover units. Fortunately, the compactors were disabled. I recovered and sailed through to Research, mostly in stealth mode.

The first floor of Research was anticlimatic. I hacked the exit locations right way, and one was nearby. I fought a little and got closer. I got stymied by a corridor that didn't lead to the exit directly. Painful past experience taught me that Research is highly segmented, so I just carved my way through the rock for about 8 slots with my cannons and cleared the bots guarding the exit.

Burrowing through rocks seem to be highly exploitable.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So, on to that thrice-cursed second Research floor. I find a terminal on entry and another next to it. Both level 2. I slap on my hackware, install botnets, and milk them 3 times each for the exit. Bang, nearest exit halfway down. I purge the alert back to low security. Programmers come in for a chat and leave me with good hover units. I make my way to the exit with hardly a fight.


Mmmph.

All that preparation, all that scheming, for naught. I was denied of my rightful challenge. Mmm. I am feeling a little frustrated. Angry, even. Those damn bots! Always picking on me. Never cooperating. It's their fault. It's all their fault. I will show them. I WILL SHOW THEM ALL!

First, the theme song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BE0D9geu2o

Now. The master plan. Climb to Access. Find a terminal. Hack the garrison access points. Keep the alert level low, bust the garrisons. Purge the corruption. And then... Heh heh. Heh heh heh heh heh!

So, I embark on my journey. I locate several terminals. All level 3, none will pip out the garrison locations. I find one garrison and disable it. I also find the exit.

I locate another garrison, and make a huge mistake. While breaching the room containing the garrison, programmers find me. Reinforcements get summoned right from the garrison, my hover units get shot off, and I'm caught out in the open and attacked from multiple sides. I dispatch the lot but I lose a lot of health in the process. I'm down to 1100. I restock propulsion and guns, but my storage units are in critical state. I destroy the garrison and another two right next to it.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I get pinned down for a long time in the middle of the map. Patrols everywhere. I hide in a wall and kill 3 programmers dispatch plus an ARC. They seem to be coming from the south, which makes sense since I explored almost all of the top third of the map.

Heading down, I get a stroke of luck. 2 HPC storage units, plus a garrison close to it. Jackpot!

Then something weird happens. I get bogged in a fight that should have ended quickly in a tight corridor. I actually kill 8 waves in that place. I get stripped because I can't replace items as they vanish in the tight corridor. The ARCs are coming from the north?! I get out, restock a bit, but things are clearly going south.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)


I clear a huge batch with launchers. I'm completely stripped and out of power. I take out the last terminator on self power. I'm down to 25 HP.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I die to falling rocks trying to avoid that programmer. Oops.

Final score. Peak influence: 2463.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Question: can ARCs come out from garrisons once they got destroyed and repaired by engineers?
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: zxc on December 05, 2015, 10:05:54 PM
Great writeup :o

So many propulsion slots... I have no idea what to think.
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Kyzrati on December 06, 2015, 09:42:10 AM
Wow, thanks for the entertaining writeup, Decker.

Very interesting to see such a unique slot distribution. All that propulsion, and only 2 power. I think this type of strategy really became more viable with the massive integrity boost to propulsion that enables you to essentially use them as armor instead of, you know, actual armor ;). We'll see how uses of this strategy pan out in the future.

Quote from: Decker on December 05, 2015, 03:10:55 PM
"Question: can ARCs come out from garrisons once they got destroyed and repaired by engineers?"
Nope. Garrison Access cannot be repaired. At present no machines are repaired, nor are their plans to make it so. If you can take out all the Garrisons they can no longer reinforce from them.

This run was replete with vengeance, indeed!

I must admit that after reading all that, I broke out laughing at
Quote from: Decker on December 05, 2015, 03:10:55 PM
"I die to falling rocks trying to avoid that programmer."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Enno on December 06, 2015, 07:26:04 PM
not much time this week...i reached research for the first time in a weekly seed. sad to say that i have no scoresheet for this run. i played on my linuxpc and i don't no why but my scores-folder was named with 3 -_- now it works again but the run is done. i think research and round about 8000.
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Happylisk on December 07, 2015, 06:28:40 AM
Pretty ho hum run.  I had a great build entering factory, but then managed to delete my game rather than save it.  I didn't have much enthusiasm after that (knowing the layout of Materials felt like cheating), so I decided to see how angry the AI gets if you destroy every machine you come across.  The answer is very angry. 
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Kyzrati on December 07, 2015, 08:23:24 AM
Argh, I was going to play this one tonight but all the time got sucked away by an important family-life-direction conversation with my wife. Bleh.

How'd you manage to delete your run, Happylisk? Their anger = Your points ;)

Respectable runs Enno and zill. What took you out, zill? Looks like you were doing just fine for pretty much the whole run, and even your final influence wasn't too high.
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Happylisk on December 07, 2015, 10:51:54 AM
Quote from: Kyzrati on December 07, 2015, 08:23:24 AM
How'd you manage to delete your run, Happylisk? Their anger = Your points ;)

Not sure.  I just got a new latop (Lenovo Y50 with 16 GB of RAM w000t) to replace my old piece of shit.  Cogmind was the first game installed on it, natch.  The seed run was my first time playing cogmind on it and I took a break in the middle.  When I came back the save was gone.  It's possible I hit the delete button instead of save; it took me a few tries to import my settings and get away from the tutorial start, so it's possible I was too use to hitting delete save and that's what happened. 

I haven't had time to play since that seed run, so I'll keep an eye out for anything (the new OS is windows 10 which is a fucking abomination).   
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Kyzrati on December 07, 2015, 08:00:47 PM
Okay, sounds like you just hit the wrong button then. I press Ctrl-Shift-Alt-s if I want to stop to come back later. No chance of losing the run there :)

(The other possibility is that you haven't given Cogmind permissions to write to its own directory, which will cause both saving and changes to settings to fail! This is always a possibility on a new system, though Cogmind worked fine in a fresh install of Win10 I tried it on a couple months back.)

About Win10, I totally need a new laptop myself--my dev machine is ancient now--but Win10 is terrible, which is the sole reason I'm not upgrading now. I'm still using 7, which has been wonderful. It's like XP all over again and I'd love to keep using it for years to come (like XP =p), but I use a laptop rather than a desktop now, and installing an alternative/older OS is a bad idea on laptops...
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Happylisk on December 08, 2015, 08:13:50 AM
Good call on the permission thing.  I'll play a level tonight, save it, come back, and see what happens.  If it's an authorization problem, easily fixed. 
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: karlnp on December 10, 2015, 11:14:02 PM
Misremembered this week's seed as this one. Still my best s/core yet.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: Kyzrati on December 10, 2015, 11:27:40 PM
Factory is where things do start to get tougher :). Looks like you were running on quite a lot of propulsion there! The times suggest you weren't moving quickly, however. What was the strategy behind that? (Certainly more recently Decker has been posting about using lots of propulsion even for slower builds...)
Title: Re: Weekly Seed #18 [Alpha 4b] [Seed: Heavy Metal]
Post by: karlnp on December 10, 2015, 11:31:18 PM
I had actually just read your/Decker's conversation about using propulsion as armor/not armor, so when I couldn't source enough hover units or legs, I added whatever else I had around to serve as impromptu armor. I had a couple Improved Mass Distribution modules which made that a much more doable strategy. I don't think it'll remain long-term viable, as much as Decker is apparently the wunderkind of Cogmind - the power drain was significant to start rearing its head around 9/8 in small amounts, even with early Improved Heatsinks.