The Let's Play Archive

Creeper World Series

by Strategic Sage

Part 210: Ties

Ties (47:56)





Amazing! Unbelievable!! Inconceivable!!!




In other words, the Pulse Cannons got a new paint job.
















We've got a clear left-to-right thing going on, with the upper-left being our starting location. The string of bluish emplacements are the weapons they were talking about, near the vertical median in the middle of the map. We'll get to those later.




With such a good defensive position complete with struc, a benign emitter, land for omnis, and numerous energy storage pods available, the start was not difficult. And then we get this.







Soon energy supply became an issue though, even with everything mired we could get our omnis on. Finding a good way to expand could be tricky. Here I'm preparing to try and move downwards, with 20 income ... and 79 expenses.




























Ogun's command of the telegraphed obviousness here is starkly contrasted with the oblivioiusness of the others, be it feigned or genuine.
















Is he really using a pet name that merely removes one letter, or did he forget how to spell?







I guess it wasn't faked. They really all are this dense.


































The title of this game really should be Too Many Secrets. If you've managed to recover from that massive wall of , the main takeaway is that we can now use Amp Gems to upgrade various tech categories.




It takes a bit of time for them to ramp up - efficiency starts at 0%, escalating to 100%. You can release an amp gem from these at any time, but that resets to 0. This rewards planning without being overly restrictive IMO. I also like the fact that you have to choose what to do with your amp gems now; enhance a specific ship or invest in a tech category. I'll try to get to all of these eventually.




Here's what I go with initially. I really liked the idea of Benign Emergent ... there must be benign everything apparently because symmetry ... Omni Reactors allow the omni to produce it's own energy, and Land Production Increase boosts the production of mired land. The red Release button does what it says, ? brings up an image and description of what each option has going for it.

Sometime I will get off my arse and make screenshots of those. But not today.




Searching for a way to get the benign particulate out there to help with our advance, I came up with this. Then I took off the benign emergent amp gem, throwing it into Energy Range Increase. The gap is just too big, and I want help crossing it.




Combined with our new Tanker, that did enough to get us down there and in possession of a new Energy Source. Now we were starting to make progress, but there is yet a lot of annoying enemy struc about.




New Tanker is the ship on the bottom here. A lot of other ships are gone because we underestimated these block-shaped particulate formations coming off the nearby emitter. A Cruiser, Joven, and Lathe all paid for this hubris. The energy source also went down, and the Discharger was badly damaged. It, uh, was not exactly a smooth operation.




Once we were back in position, I used the 'Grabber Relay' technique to pacify that hostile emitter and start reclaiming land and eliminating more struc down here. Also notice the energy mine - I've put an amp gem into boosting mine production, and that is gradually cycling up to give us more supply.




I should have done more of it, but the Omnis started becoming stars as their lathes accelerating the struc-clearing operation.




Then there was this interesting battle of particulate between ours and theirs. We fight for control of the median, which I'd switched to as my next target, without ever actually coming into direct contact. Also the Wolf busily keeps the enemy emergent at bay.




Three omnis made the landing, but only one survived ... the others were easily rebuilt. Gradually expanding our mire was one goal here, and I switched the mine production upgrade back into benign emergent. Eventually this would allow us to reach the new weapons further down the strip.




Getting this energy source in the middle of the median strip was key, allowing energy range to supply one free gun. Then it turned it's fire on the enemy mire nearby, freeing up the others. Of course, by this point I'd really eliminated most resistance in the area so they guns didn't do that much good, but they are still cool and after they fully charge, you can see they can unleash a significant barrage.




This should look familiar - we saw something a lot like it a few levels back. One thing the median does is completely block off our supply of benign particulate, so that would be no further use to us. The resistance from the first emitter here was considerable; the Hammer was destroyed once and almost a second time before we knocked the thing out.

Getting to the last emitter on the far right of the map was way past the limit of our energy + Tanker extension of the range. I ended up doing a few raiding runs forward with a few ships to absorb most of the particulate, then went in for the kill. That worked, but it was pointed out to me that you can actually chain the Tanker and Micro-Tanker together to reach further with more energy supply. I was not at all aware that was a thing, and I don't think I would have figured it out on my own.




Notice the benign emergent clustered here. We've got new buttons on the left taskbar to set and clear a rally point for the buggers. That proved useful as well in helping to clear the way, and the emergent could care less about our energy range.




Of course YOU did. Now if you'd just stop screwing around and stop projecting such a finite existence ...



















Everything you know is wrong, left is right up is down and short is long.

JUST FORGET THE WORDS AND SING ALONG!!! ... umm, where was I again ...




Oh yeah, I was double-facepalming at this cliffhanger ex machina.




Make it so!




I'm not sure how many more Secrets I can take. And what is our enemy protecting with all that struc? Stay tuned for that ... if you dare.