Part 107: Tormented Space: Alelurgtum

Tormented Space: Alelurgtum

Video

The tool-tip for Tormented Space says "A vast and tormented region. Free as many systems as possible in these 'challenging' worlds."

We've already seen the starting system, S200_0. Following the advice here in the thread to start from largest to smallest, I ignore the inhibitor planet and that makes Alelurgtum the first one to tackle. By the by, this proved to be sound advice.




Big sucker of a map. Emitters and digitalis in the south, so naturally I want to avoid those.




This plateau is fairly centrally located. And way too freaking aggressive. Takes a bit over a minute to figure that out and restart. You could probably do something by taking the nearby artifact to freeze the creeper while building up and fortifying ... but nah.





Now I'm in the north, where I should be. Note the ridges - they are a critical, and apparently at least fairly common terrain feature.




I put up a few collectors and connect to a Totem, but it didn't take long to figure out that pounding the depths with mortars from atop this ridge was going to be a key strategem. Already the creeper approaches along it, and the next while was spent getting 'enough' Mortars up along both ridges but esp. this one, and getting reactors to power them.




The end of the ridges ended up sort of like a finger-tip dipped in the water, and I just needed to keep enough firepower going so that I didn't get submerged. Considerable depth is already forming despite the size of the map, less than ten minutes in.




To be safe, I put a more concentrated group at each tip to head off the strongest advance of the Creeper.




Here's the reactor farm, as well as a mass of Cannons preparing to push east, then south to take out the first emitter near the ridge-tip. I'm at almost 33 energy income now and feeling comfortable in that. Within minutes I have a significant shortfall as I expand the attack, and more reactors are laid down.




It goes well at first, and then not so much, as I underestimate the force required. I have to go uphill to the east, then due south, maintaining that flank while pushing towards the emitter. I try to do this with insufficient force, and get bogged down. Runners complicate this a bit as well.




After a while I decide to just go big and build a trio of Berthas. I like this approach of clearing a path. By the way, this emitter, which is a bit on the strong side but fairly typical, puts out 110 creeper per 0.9 seconds. Some have lower intervals. So they're definitely more powerful than the Prospector Zone ones.




You can tell that I got annoyed by this thing ... because I went so far as to build a shield. It protected the nullifier, and I finally took the emitter down 25 minutes or so after starting the attack. That could have been done better, not least of which due to me sitting on almost 700 unused Aether at the time I finally notched it.




It did shrivel up a branch of digitalis heading to this runner nest though, so that was a nice thing.




Further east was the most low-hanging fruit, isolated emitters whereas they were more concentrated in the southwest. So I re-targeted the Berthas and prepared to move in this direction. Once again underestimating the number of weapons needed, I eventually pushed past some hiccups and took the plateau I initially tried to start on.




AC is my friend against digitalis, and I also employed the Freeze artifact nearby here. Now that I had ore and a couple emitters down, I was feeling better. The primary remaining obstacle was just distance; a lot of creeper had built up and I had to push it a considerable ways to get anywhere. Another isolated emitter in the southeast fell after some while. At that point I controlled most of the map, so the flanks I needed to cover were much more manageable.




I then turned west to face this, the stronghold of the enemy. I repeatedly referred to this as 'the last three emitters', but you can see there's four ... and an Air Exclusion zone. I didn't see the one furthest west. I do know how to count, I promise!




Here I am about to start the final assault. I've got Berthas targeted basically on the emitters, and I'm just mass-moving weapons, not staying in any one place for long. After a mere hour and a half and some definite missteps, Alelurgtum is conquered.