Cogmind > Strategies

Maxing Score

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kiedra:
By the time I reached -2, I knew it's gonna be a good run, so I really did wanna get out, but that stupid move of mine at the garrison made it significantly harder. On the other hand, this is where Cogmind really shines and is quite unique I guess, even though the situation is absolutely hopeless, there is no reason to give up, so I kept shooting. I even did crit kill ARCs before they opened, but that barely made a difference, because they just kept coming. My Cog was insanely tanky too, 50% shield (plus 2x backup), phase shifters, a full transporter load of medium cesium armor and lots of guns. It was the first time that I actually missed the hunters too, because they drop KE's, but all I got in those ARCs were grunts, melees and those imps, so rebuilding was kinda rough. My core was still fine (around 1000/1600) when I finally ran out of guns, but once you lose your crit (and penetration) potential, which those lasers just don't have, things go south quickly. I really shoulda made some screenshots, but I didn't, because I'm an idiot and even though the score was fairly high, it just feels sorta not right, because the main goal after all, is to get the heck out. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun in that run :D

Joking_Phantom:
All right, I've got more after a second run on easiest mode (Beta 3.1):

Floors 10-8:
Spoiler (click to show/hide) Secure Large and Medium storage units, pretty obvious.

Getting into Storage in floor 9 can be profitable, nothing game changing though. You can find EXP. rated processors and high rated propulsion/weapons. It's hard to take advantage though, given limited slots. You'll be lugging this stuff around for a few floors before you can use them well. Efficient high rated weapons like the Mini. Assault Cannon are great to make 8-6 easier.

No need to take the Recycling shortcut. You need explosives to clear the drones before they can scan you, but its hard to get them all. Besides, floor 8 branch could be something interesting, and can give you part of your preparations for floor 7-6 branches.

The only thing of note in the mines I've found is finding YI-UFO. He drops a Bottomless Matter Pit of 1500 matter storage and a Doublenader. Very useful both immediately and throughout the game, makes matter management easy.

Going into garrisons (200 points plus whatever you blow up) for the extra points and a new floor layout seems possible, but that's the only reason to do so.
Floors 7-6:
Spoiler (click to show/hide) Secure a Greatsword and a Heavy Rocket/Missile Launcher before heading into Zion. Ideally your seed should have Dataminer first, then Zion

Dataminer:

Stack melee analysis suites and melee weapons that can follow up, pray you get good hackware. Activate the data conduit and blow the grunts away using explosives. No big if you don't get the hackware though. Facing Combat Programmers isn't too bad - getting EM resistance will make facing them 1v1 doable without attrition. 300 for meeting data miner, 3k for using the data conduit (requires attacking him).

Zion & Deep Caves:

The Greatsword is the only weapon I've found capable of destroying reinforced walls, to guarantee access to Deep Caves. Moreover, its capable of defeating Imprinter and her first allies while keeping their parts around. Completing deep caves gives you 3 bonus score events: 1k for entering, 1k for killing Z-Imprinter, and 15k for exposing all 24 GOLEMs.

Use explosives to kill the assembled mob without altering the GOLEMs by sneaking directly up the middle to activate the false wall, then firing explosives into the front-middle of the mob by being 1 square off the center line.

To defeat the GOLEMs: Lure 1 to the Z-Power unit, then blow it up on him. Gun him down the rest of the way with the equipment in the side wall caches. Then defeat the second one via GOLEM firepower, and get the rest of the 24 units 1 at a time, pick them up before they can activate and waste them, or just kill them before they integrate anything.

The GOLEM unit is useful, but not that useful. You need 7+2 utility slots to get the Combat suite. Legs take time to build instead of being swapping them on part destruction. You need 2 slots in power to use the Focal Cannons, which are extremely energy hungry. Ideally, after using it to defeat the second GOLEM, you should just de-equip it, keep the legs/ alloy armor until they die, and grab another spare one if you want to use it later in the game. Unfortunately, equipping it later in the game means time lost to rebuilding, 2 inventory slots used up until 5+, and by the time mid-late game rolls around you should have access to par or superior weapons/utilities.
 

Floors 5-4
Spoiler (click to show/hide) Cetus/Archives/Hub_04, Warlord, Zhirov, Armory/Lab. You can't visit them all. Armory/Lab can show up on 3, but 3 has Testing which has great items and the SGEMP prototype. Cetus can show up at 6, but you will have to go without Dataminer or Zion, both of which give great amounts of points. Going Warlord and not getting imprinted means he will show up on 2, which is a mild problem - it will trigger max security level, and all machines will be locked down. This means no fabricating at a time when have all the schematics you could possibly want. Doing it in Quarantine and later is difficult.

Point totals:
Cetus - 300 + 300 + 500 + 200*4 network hubs = 1900
Zhirov - 300 + 2000 SGEMP delivery (2000 acquire bonus can happen without meeting Zhirov) = 2300
Warlord - 500 + 1000 + 2000 Research Meet + 5000 Hack God mode (requires dataminer) = 8.5k
Armory/Lab - 3000 + 3000 decode (requires dataminer) = 6k

I'm not sure if its possible to get Warlord to Command to face against Main.c, which I think I saw in someone else's score file. In fact, I have no idea what Warlord does on floor 1 other than caves in Command.

I'm fairly sure the priority is: Warlord, Armory/Lab, Zhirov. Cetus should never be considered. On a practical note, going Zhirov is much easier than Armory/Lab. But for max points, Zhirov will have to be skipped.

Warlord: Not complicated, just visit, talk, poke around for stuff, then leave. The stash is good, another plus on top of the massive points for visiting Warlord.

Armory/Lab: Need the Transdimensional Reconstructor to get here reliably. Lab offers a few interesting things, but not much. I did not explore Armory much, but presumably it would be like Storage but better. Testing/Quarantine/Section 7 offer plenty of things for your inventory though.

Zhirov: A few nice goodies here, but nothing that really makes the game easier.

Extension/Cetus/Archives/Hub_04: It's just too hard to score lots of points here. After blasting through lengthy sections of map, you somehow need to farm up in the last branch map Hub_04. But the garrisons here emit Lightnings, which are likely to corrupt your face. You are still limited on slots, so you can't really handle high security robot farming. I suppose if you got a 1 entrance room next to an exit, 75%+ EM resistance, and some self destruct interrupters, you might be able to make a case for getting more points here than Armory/Lab. Killing the Network Hubs is like a free Ghost barrier though, so it could be useful (the explosion is massive and will corrupt you)


Floors 3-2:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)Testing - You can find Shell Armor, Potential Cannon, Perforator, and Sigix Terminator here. Other cool stuff here, but these 4 are the most important in my book (Core Cannon/Stripper might be 5/6th). Also SGEMP prototype for 2k+2k points can be picked up here, but since we probably aren't visiting Zhirov it's only the first 2k.
The Potential Cannon and Perforator are great CC weapons that destroy swaths of high value robots. The Sigix Terminator you find here, and in Section 7 are actually the most important scoring opportunities in the game, which you should use in Access/Command (getting 2 is massive points). Shell Armor is nice, although many enemies fire things that bypass your armor and fuck you up so it's not actually that important. It's questionable if replicating Shell Armor via Subatomic Replicator is worth it - you don't need 6 slots of armor. Evasion, Force fields, and EM resistance are the real value utilities here for tanking yourself up. A Damper plating that lasts until you get a core redistributor might be workable, but I haven't explored this yet. Hacking the protovariant for 500 will get you some kicks and a nice distraction (not sure if hacking both is double the 500 score bonus or not). Try not to use the Core Reset Matrix (3k points) until you exit to the Surface, the intel and schematics are rather nice. Phasing AFG is really nice if you can find it - it will save a lot of time of walking.

Quarantine/Section 7: Grab and use as many unique artifacts as you can. Core Expanders don't actually expand past the evolution limit, and vice versa, so use 1 for the points on floor 1 if you can. 200 points per unique alient artifact usage (equip). Getting the Sigix in Quarantine (2k), putting him in the Exoskeleton in Section 7 (3k), and actually escaping with him (5k) is a total of 10k points. But the 5k escape is actually rather difficult, because it will put Section 7 and Access on High Security lockdown. You will need to have memorized where to go, or the time you waste slaughtering hordes of robots might get the Sigix killed before you reach Surface. Get a Remote Force field/ energy mantle to help out, along with ample power via matter drive/ power amplifier.

Floor 1:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)Get out of Access ASAP. There's nothing here but robot armies trying to kill you, and you probably have the Sigix with you meaning no machines.

Once in Command, you have 3 objectives. Secure your exit via 1 Sigix Terminator. Destroy the Command Garrison with another Sigix Terminator. (25k points) Destroy Main.c (10k). The command Garrison is just a horde of robots hidden behind phase walls (there is a phase generator you can destroy to make it obvious, but a matter drive will reveal it easily enough). Main.c calls this when you kill the shell, but preemptively nuking it actually gives a ludicrous amount of points via value destroyed AND high security kills. Killing Main.c might be hard without killing the Sigix, he's too fast and its hard to reliably tank the guards or Main.c himself. Activating the two cave entrances might help, but you need to have kept all your hacking gear, which is tough to do when traversing 3-2 branches.

I did not find Access_0 yet, or use Warlord's tunnels, will update when I do. (if I have to use another Transdimensional Reconstructor to get into Access_0 then it shouldn't be too hard)

These specific events should add up to around 68k in bonus points + 12k value destroyed from the Command Garrison. 4k for Alien Techs, 5000 for Prototype IDs, 4500 for Evolutions. At least 3000 on the Robots Destroyed Category, and whatever amount of value destroyed should add up to 120k+. Going to Access_0 should be another 20k points, when I find out how to do so...

zxc:
That's some impressive knowledge you've accumulated in a short span of time. Most of it is on point. A full extended win is a long process and there are many things to optimise and even more things that can go wrong.

Maxing out bonus points is a good method for high scoring. The only real alternative is to farm as long as possible. To date, all the 80k+ runs have been accomplished with farming. The dream, of course, is the infinite farm, attainable through zero attrition.

DDarkray:

--- Quote from: zxc on November 24, 2017, 07:50:58 AM ---The dream, of course, is the infinite farm, attainable through zero attrition.

--- End quote ---

Technically, this is possible, but no one will have the patience or sanity to do that.

GJ:

--- Quote from: zxc on November 24, 2017, 07:50:58 AM ---To date, all the 80k+ runs have been accomplished with farming.
--- End quote ---
I'm not sure I would say I farmed in my 90k+ run in Beta 1. I had an extremely powerful offensive build so I did go out of my way to kill anything that could bother me, as any individual encounter was trivial and I only needed to ensure that multiple things don't go wrong at once. Value destroyed still ended up being only around 22k, as I wasn't waiting for stuff to spawn just so I could murder it. The run got most of its score by completing many of the high-value, static bonuses (i.e. not stuff like High Alert Combat Kills).

My 100k+ run in Beta 2 got close to 50k in value destroyed, that's mostly because the build was suuuper slow and had to fight through a ton of robots to get anywhere. But yeah, the vast majority of 80k+ runs we'll see are going to have some 5-digit amount of value destroyed in them.


High Alert Combat Kills seems like it can be a rather significant bonus, I had a run today where I was being a bit silly and got some massive heat on me, escaping that attention ended up being more difficult than I expected --- I had to deal with High Security five levels in a row, and I got a High Alert Combat Kills bonus of 53332 for it. This was a bit more of a farmy run given I wasn't fully prepared to deal with the high-sec, I suspected it would impair my ability to deal with the extended endgame (and it did), so it made more sense to just have fun fighting high-sec while making some progress through the level when reasonable. Making it out alive is pretty good, I suppose.

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