Part 183: asteroid map & Wallsaver

asteroid map & Wallsaver


At long last it is finally time to conclude our adventures in the J system. It's been one heck of a ride.




This planet really threw me for a loop. You might call this Adventures in Indecision. Obvious starting area in the southwest is obvious, but why do we have a bomber? And double-why do we have seven guppies?? You need guppies ... but not that many. The emitters are weak, ore is clearly going to be important, we have Spore Towers, there's some Aether on the south of the mainland ... small map but there's quite a bit going on actually.




So I get a Reactor started and head off to nullify that tower on the southeast island, then put up a Beam to defend that area. All of that seemed to call out to be done.




After putting up an Ore Guppy to ferry the ore back to my base, and an AC Guppy there to transport the finished product for a sprayer, I put up a Terp and ... sort of stalled. I couldn't really decide what to do, hemming and hawing between a SuperBeam, SuperMortar, or SuperSprayer on that power zone. There is a clear best answer, but it would take me some time to find it.

All of that would wait though, since I allowed the terp to use up too much energy, and a spore crashed into the island and wrecked a bunch of stuff. So a rather embarassing restart.




I was thinking about guppying up to the northwest here and getting more ore, one of the ideas I kept vacillating between, and tried doing some bombing there early. Sending enough guppies there immediately could probably achieve this, but going that aggressively right away didn't occur to me so I mostly just accomplished wasting time here.




I also brilliantly moved the Bomber to path directly over the AE zone in the south a little later on, then didn't realize at first what the problem was and why it wasn't doing anything. Amateur.




Terraforming the starting area to get maximum room for more reactors soon became a thing.




Eventually, after dabbling about with a sprayer that never had nearly enough ammo, I decided to give that SuperMortar idea a full trial. By this point, parts of the main island were in the 17-18 creeper depth range. The positioning of the two beams is important; there's just enough range for them to knock out the spores consistently and protect both small islands from air attack.




With continued support from the bomber on the very southern tip, the mortar attacks were enough to greatly reduce the amount of creeper resistance and acquire a landing zone.




A relay connection was soon established, AC began to take over the fight more and more, and a fairly quick conquest was achieved. The buildup to it though, needn't have been nearly as convoluted as it was.




The tiny Wallsaver map at maximum zoom.




Remember that time.




About 10 seconds in here. Creeper and Anti-Creeper are filling the zone from the top, and the arrow keys do indeed move my wall block. Movement is very rapid, I can get across the whole thing in a second or two.




After a couple of minutes, I have to start thinking a bit about where to move. At times more than half the map is covered in creeper, but there are still always safe zones. High ground is attractive as ever.




4:32. Things are starting to get a little more interesting - from time to time I'm forced to move quickly through creeper to safer locations. It's no longer possible to totally avoid damage.




Just over a minute later. Things are getting real; it's hard to find anywhere safe and significant deterioration is happening. By the seven-minute mark I start losing blocks, and what's left is highly damaged.




Now this is bizarre. I was down to one vertical three-block section out of the original square of nine, but not quite dead. When you reach eight minutes, this pops up. Except it says 12 minutes and change, while the original briefing said 10. Go drunk mission timer, you're home. In any case, this tech demo demonstrates more stuff that can be done with the engine, and at least it doesn't take that long to complete - only a modest amount of tedium & annoyance here.

Achievement systems are up next. Prepare yourselves.