Part 54: Day 11: The Cooker

Day 11: The Cooker


https://youtu.be/3ciTQwBvHC8












You're trying to use logic in the Creeper World universe, Lieutenant. That's a fool's errand.













Oops.




Ready everything we have. Here's everything we have:




Everything we have is just the Liberation Ship. There are no weapons or any other buildings to start with. The schematic is just below us, some more artifact goodies in the tunnels below. If I'd been particularly observant, I would have noticed that only two of four emitters can be seen initially. I was not particularly observant.

Like the first game, this is a pretty significant difficulty spike. Here's a number to show that:

Doom Timer: 2:01.

Just a shade over two minutes. I had no idea it would be that fast. I investigate the schematic first.
















I rather like these things. It's a new twist on things to be able to stop or at least greatly slow the advance of the Creeper without actually destroying it. Essentially these just buy time for dealing with a thorny problem more safely. I don't think I've ever been resourceful enough to find any 'other uses' for them.




A whopping minute and 17 seconds in. I got one of the energy Crystals, used that energy to get the others, built up reactors in the lower tunnels ... but totally failed to notice where the other two emitters were. Well, now I know. They're above us. And for the first time in Creeper World 2, I have failed. We are all dead.

Or as I eloquently put it when I saw what was happening ... "Crap!"




Well ... uhh ... let's try that again.




Next time, I do the same basic startup but am a little more aggressive with using energy from the crystals to get reactors up sooner. Then I deploy the new Repulsors in all the gaps. Or rather, I start doing so. It's still not fast enough, as you can see here. Joven, Harro, and the rest of the liberation ship are all dead again. This is one of the repulsors exploding just after I placed it as the creeper above breaks through.




This time I engage my mental faculties enough to place the repulsors at the top gaps, which is where the enemy will break through first, before the others. I also build up the reactors a little faster and don't build as many, going with just a couple rows. I can add more later if I get our defenses up.




I get them all built in time. Now I'm in business! This should ... wait. They are all pointing upwards. The ones on the right and left won't do any good that way. Uhh ... I don't know how to use these things ... Creeper coming through soon from the sides ...




After placing another row of Reactors I discover this; selecting a Repulsor you can adjust direction and beam length. As mentioned in the help the length of the beam controls the range and the energy cost. But I'm concerned with the direction here. This is one time when I would probably have been justified in pausing the game. But I'm just in that mindset of doing stuff on the fly here. So I changed the direction of the beams ...




But not fast enough. The ones on the left got switched, but breakthrough on the right. Time for Take 4, but now I really do think I know how to handle this.




I was able to get the ship out of the way, but all my reactors were destroyed. I spent a bit here contemplating whether or not I could eventually push back the tide with a few blasters, clear enough room for reactors, etc. And I could have done it. But it really isn't worth it when I know a much better way.




There. Next try, and I get everything in place in plenty of time. At this point, with two rows of Reactors, I'm producing 3.85 energy and using 3 for these Repulsors. So I've got a stable, secure situation. The hard work has been done. I place more Reactors, excavate a bit for even more room, and generally upgrade the income here.




A couple of tech domes up, and the repulsors work well enough that I've gone into one of the right-side tunnels and excavating downwards, creating a route to attack one of the emitters directly. Now we're in business.




Here you can see the interesting launching missile behavior, as some of them travel right through the small cavern, then up the pathway to explode in the denser areas up by the repulsors. More gravitational strangeness is of course at work here.




Soon I'm able to deactivate the two right-side repulsors to save energy, while this launcher goes over to the left side to pummel the biggest concentrations there. Meanwhile more blasters are built to get me close enough on the right side to deploy a nullifier.




I move the other one up here, so it can start getting to work on the top-side pool. Meanwhile, I try out upgrading weapon range for the first time and am quite impressed with it's effect on the blasters:




This is just the first level, but it makes a considerable difference.




Once the lower two Emitters are handled, all weapons are diverted to the upper tunnels, still repulsor-guarded just in case. With gravity against us you can never be too careful. The end of this struggle is nigh. Victory is achieved within a couple of minutes.




This is the first mission for which I edited out some of the video; a total of about three minutes of repetitive stuff at the beginning of some re-starts. It won't be the last. Creeper World 2 is only starting to flex it's muscles.