Part 156: The Push & Countdown

The Push & Countdown


Two more planets in the TonyP2000 system, these being on the smaller side of things and not specifically paired by name - though as we'll see, they still sort of go together well.




Yeah, I probably will.




This is The Push. A horizontal strip basically. The little-used decaying barriers in the west are our starting location, and the resistance gets greater the futher we move east. And that's more or less the level, really. Oh, I guess I should actually show what happened. Fair enough then.




This was just to the left of the previous screen, but it's a map you have to scroll. We start with a Node, four SuperReactors, and some collectors. We've given several nearby Ore Deposits behind the barrier and a couple of Totems. So there's no danger so long as we can take care of our business.




Same area at 3:40 as the barrier breaches. I'm ready for it though, plenty of defensive weapons in place, a carpet of anti-creeper, Forge up and running, and starting to ramp up energy for an offensive.




IIRC, this first PZ was from a standard 20 per 0.5s emitter. I think the first two or three are that strength, moving up later. In any case, I elect to wait on the Berthas until I have a proper location like this for them.




The next bit gets a little more iffy. Runners coming at us from higher elevation, ruin walls in place, digitalis on north and south - all that makes for an effective, if brief, slowing of the momentum. Here I'm just starting to get a foothold to the east of a wall section, and once I clear this out a bit more I can put more weapons up there and make better progress.




Past the ruins, the digitalis path joins then splits again. Emitter strength in this area is 80-100 per second, about double the standard. Artillery is doing well at keeping it from piling up at all. Pushing into these areas requires only a flanking maneuver around the north of the ruin walls to get going again.




At the far end is the Runner Nest, and then the two forces can join once more.




Fans of the Titan planet from a while back will recall how much I love fighting digitalis uphill. This is the finish, with the most webbing and creeper output on the map. Not that much more of either though, and we've now got concentrated bertha fire coming down on this area - there's nothing left for them to shoot. Took about three minutes to wrap up.




This is known as Countdown. I think there was originally a reason for this, which I'm sure the script experts will be pleased to enlighten us on. Once again this is not all of it - scrolling north and south, this time with a vertical orientation.




We begin at the bottom, with only one weak emitter to deal with, 15 per half-second. A few ore spots will fuel things early.




This is why I say I think there is a script. Six devices, which I assume were intended to do something related to a countdown of some type. Except, as far as I can tell, they don't. I didn't see them serve any purpose at all. Of course, maybe they are there for decoration, or it's something subtle, or the name means nothing. But I'd guess either we have another faulty script or one that was just plain never written.




A few weapons are enough to clear this bottom area. That's when it gets a little interesting.




Moving across this is a little tougher than it may initially appear. Digitalis to contend with and not much room at all.




Further north, we need to fight increasing amounts of resistance and don't have a lot of terrain to do it with. It's not so much difficult as just slow, since you can only get so many weapons in range of the enemy.




Past that, we come to the beginning of the final section. Uphill against digitalis. Who'd have thunk.




This flat area where the SuperSniper is has maximum height - we're not forced to terraform any sort of platform to deal with runners coming down the final hill.



The gap in the middle here at the final tier is quite convenient for getting all up in the digitalis' business. There's not a lot of creeper as it all tries to flow down the slope, and soon the webbing is cleared out and the day's work concluded. These both were solid levels - difficulty clearly wasn't the goal, but there was thought put into making you do specific things at various points.