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Post by Ironfang on Aug 14, 2007 16:23:26 GMT
Yes I read it was impossible as well, I did see a screenshot from level 100 but he failed and used an infinite money cheat. I thought I would try the infinite money and was able to get to guess where?...Level 93. My maze was far from perfect but it was not the walkers I had problems with. Shot at 2007-08-14
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Post by FunkySwerve on Aug 14, 2007 18:00:10 GMT
I made it to 93 legit, but wiped there. I think it might be possible if you miss almost none before that level, but I've no intention of trying to find out (the least I missed was 6 on 79, 11 on 86). In case you are curious, I had to start selling off plasma towers and building DCAs before air waves, but I think that was the wrong approach. I believe you need to keep building plasmas to keep up with killing the ground critters, to have enough money for sufficient DCAs. In any event, I had these (top) figures at the various air levels: wave 72 - 6 red 1 blue DCA - 8 red plasma, 1 in construction during attack - 2 blue icers - none missed to this point wave 79 - 7 red DCA 1 blue (had the $ to upgrade but too late) - 9 red plasma - 2 blue icers - missed 6 (also missed 6 with 8 red dca 10 red plasma 2 red icers and a green ice on a later attempt, after which I closed the window, knowing the outcome) wave 86 -10 red DCA, 2 green - 6 red plasma - 2 red ice - 11 missed wave 93 -12 red DCA, 1 blue, 1 purple, 1 gold -1 red plasma - 2 red ice
Selling off plasmas is hardly ideal, though. The last level I remember having clear completely with no ground aliens trecking back and forth was either 62 or 65. At around that point I think I needed to focus more on plasmas than DCAs. DCAs are somewhat critical up to that point to get the $ from the boss air attacks on 49 and 58, but after that without the plasma you can't get $ quickly enough.
With infinite money it should be easy, though by the looks of it you DO need more DCAs. Damn. The grounders you need to have change direction whenever they get near the exit, by unblocking one exit and blockint the other - only the air should EVER get by you.
Funky
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Post by zerragon on Aug 14, 2007 19:06:38 GMT
Also made it to 93 legit after rethinking my strategi. I went with 3 red sonic positioned so that the attackers had to cross all of them at 3 sides. Then i opened and closes the labyrinth in both ends to force them to walk through the sonic chokepoint lots of times (make them change direction). I also put 2 red freezers to cover all sides where air attackers appear to slow then down, and focused the rest on full upgraded DCA. Didnt have a chance in hell to pass the airwave on 93 though, giving up now...
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Post by johannhowitzer on Aug 16, 2007 23:18:14 GMT
www.planarity.netI played this all the way up to... I think... level 40? at work once, last summer. Yes, there is a simple system to it. You gotta solve a little at a time, though. I think it might go up infinitely, I've never managed to have my computer on long enough to finish it anyway...
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Post by johannhowitzer on Aug 17, 2007 3:09:17 GMT
You guys got me hooked on Xeno Tactic now.
So far only up to mission 4... but given the now-obvious tactic of constantly reversing the grounders' direction to keep them from ever leaving, shouldn't you build a fairly simple complex that can trap grounders near each exit, then spend all the rest on air defense?
Gonna go watch a youtube video now to see.
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Post by zerragon on Aug 17, 2007 8:10:33 GMT
Bah, cheating I didnt do until realizing lvl 6 had to be impossible. Its cakewalk up to Mission 6 lvl <50, if youre able to build a smart maze. Make lots of turns and twists in the maze, so that fully upgraded plasmas hit them multiple times. Shouldnt need to do any closing opening startegy until this point if built correctly. To cover air, just put up some DCA at given intervals in the middle.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Aug 17, 2007 9:02:46 GMT
I was only watching a youtube video to see what level 93 was like, in hopes of offering some potential solution... I was already using the strategies I ended up seeing in the videos. Haven't been playing consistently, but I am already up to level 6. Haven't tried it yet, I need a break after those last 50 levels. (I messed up at about level 40, was shunting some grounders and forgot to patch a hole before the next spawn. Deadly mistake.)
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Post by johannhowitzer on Aug 19, 2007 23:45:11 GMT
First "real" attempt on mission 6, made it to wave 79 and wiped on the air. I'd done some test runs before that to develop a good maze. The maze I ended up developing worked wonders, and I can confirm that placing Zero Towers (highest grade of freeze turret) near the entrances helps a great deal, especially with air control. I need to run some experiments with freeze/air defense placement, and I need to find a way to concentrate ground fire more so I don't end with a ton of grounders at 90% health... but that was a very good run and I learned a lot. One of the biggest mistakes I made was not spreading my DCA out more. I didn't have the left side covered as much as I should have, and some early waves pushed a handful of air units through. Knowing what I do now, it should be a fairly simple matter to save all my health until at least wave 60, possibly even later, and then we'll see about the infamous 93. For ground control, I'm considering positioning a bunch of sonic and SAM near the middle - sonic to concentrate the enemies there, and the SAM units to contribute massive area damage on those massed enemies. Sort of like COBing the farm and spamming MS! EDIT: Here's a shot of me losing again tonight at wave 79. Still learning how to concentrate the ground enemies and keep them passing my red plasmas... but I made more money this time, and kept more health earlier. Just got to figure out how to squeeze out more cash, not to mention better Zero Tower placement. The air baddies weren't being constantly slowed, though the freezing did help quite a bit. Though I failed at the same wave, I let less air enemies through - a very good sign. One interesting feature of my maze is the ability to shunt at a myriad of points. I can open up a hole just about anywhere... opening one near the middle was often useful to bring the enemies closer together. Those sonic turrets near the top also helped keep the enemies near the BFGs longer. The Zero Tower in the middle of the red BFGs on the top row is an absolute must - most enemies will be slowed to a crawl as they try to pass by. I wouldn't upgrade them past yellow though, the price of $100 for 3% more chance to freeze just isn't worth it. Gonna go watch that youtube video again, maybe I'll pick up some new ideas. Meantime, here's the screenie. Note I had 7 red DCA, just like Funky, at this mission, though not the additional 1 blue, and just like him, looks like 6 air baddies got through. Maybe one more, hard to tell. I need to conserve more health!
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Post by johannhowitzer on Aug 20, 2007 10:10:47 GMT
Sorry for monopolizing the thread, but I really want to post this. Reached wave 93 legitimately, and wiped same as everyone else. I think it might just be possible, though. Of course with the cheat it is... I mean an honest victory. I think we have all underestimated, to some extent, the SAM battery. (Oddly enough, SAM stands for surface-to-air missile, while the game's tower attacks ground-based units!) Very late in my run, I planted two fully-upgraded SAMs near the center of my maze... in this shot, one of them is selected and has the red targeting ring around it. Unlike the above shot where you see grounders all over my maze, I've developed a neat technique of shifting their movement in such a way that all units, including each new group to arrive, are quickly huddled into a tiny mass. You can see them in this shot, all in a row near the top-left, right above the SAMs. When fully upgraded, SAM batteries can deal nearly the damage of a maxed-out plasma turret, and they do so with a splash effect, like freeze towers. (They also cost quite a bit less to max out!) The splash gets nice and big when they're maxed too, so I end up hurting just about every enemy in the mass with one shot. Stack four of five of these together, and the results should be devastating... I was able to whittle down their numbers with just two! With that in place, it might be possible to earn the cash needed for those all-important DCAs. At any rate, it seems SAMs are more important than plasmas late-game. On this run, I lasted into the 70s with 17 health. Wave 79 only got one past me, but then a later wave in the mid-80s dropped me to the 5 health you see here. With the SAM tactic, I expect even the mid-80s air battle would be only mildly painful, and I might be able to get there with full health... which means I could survive some misses on 93 and keep moving. One very important strategy tip, that I'm not sure anyone's thought of yet (though I could be wrong), regarding aircraft fights. You see that Zero Tower at the very top? There isn't a similar one on the left side, for a VERY good reason. It occurred to me that I could use the freeze turrets to stagger the enemy forces, and it worked wonders for the grounders - I could let my red plasmas thin out the stuff coming from the north, and by the time they finished the ones from the west would have reached them. A similar principle applies to the aircraft, and by using that northern freezer to halt the southbound copters for a bit, my DCAs were able to focus almost entirely on the eastbound ones - effectively cutting the air baddies' numbers nearly in half!! I now believe sonic turrets to be a poor investment, unless somehow the red variants are really amazing. They do inflict splash damage like the SAMs, but are more expensive and the stun effect isn't as amazing as I first thought. They do have a faster firing rate than the SAMs, of course... I might have to investigate their high-end damage output! Sorry that was so long-winded, too. I'm in a strategic mood.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Aug 20, 2007 20:49:21 GMT
SAMs can't hit air. The way the economy of the game works, you need plasmas and you need no ground critters around. The staggering with the freeze is definitely a necessary tactic, but more is needed. I would recommend a longer maze, as well, for less end swaps. I'm emailing you an excel showing my initial setup, keeps wasted money to a minimum and allows a longer maze, saving even more money. Funky
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Post by johannhowitzer on Aug 20, 2007 21:29:27 GMT
The problem with the freeze staggering is that only so much can be achieved - two freeze turrets in the same place won't make enemies go even slower, in my experience. So more than one freeze isn't needed to stagger, it wouldn't achieve anything. I also put a freezer in my DCAs so both groups would hover there for the longest time possible.
The size of maze really doesn't matter a ton with the strategy I'm using, and in retrospect I would make it even smaller to cut back on money a little. I found the quickest way to get money (AND a way I managed to keep -all- the grounders defeated as soon as the next wave came, all the way into the mid-70s!) was to keep shuttling the same enemies through those plasma towers near the top. I didn't wait until they reached the end, in other words. If I have the enemies keep wandering the maze back and forth, the same ones never walk in front of those plasmas, and I end up with a boatload of enemies damaged slightly but never killed.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Aug 20, 2007 22:51:38 GMT
So more than one freeze isn't needed to stagger, it wouldn't achieve anything. I also put a freezer in my DCAs so both groups would hover there for the longest time possible. That's precisely the type of staggering I was talking about. One to the north to further slow the later group, and a centralized one to slo both groups in turn. You need the larger maze to get remaining grounders out of the way later on, for the air attacks, but you need your plasmas placed differently to assist with those. It's a small difference, but I expect a critical one. As for the targeting, it's a nonissue, the turrets focus on the most wounded critters. The trick is keeping them in front of those turrets as much as possible. Another advantage of the freezes that caused me to experiment with them was they clump. Since DCAs have splash as well, more tightly clustered waves or air are desireable to an extent. You don't want DCAs firing at two targets seperate from each other, as happens when they come from both directions at the same time, passing over, but you do want those which are moving in the same direction to be as close together as possible. Placing a third freeze in center left might help do this as well as keeping the ground critters there (that's where I parade em) longer. You're making me want to try my hand at this again, lol. Funky
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Post by johannhowitzer on Aug 20, 2007 23:32:37 GMT
Yeah, talking about it is making me want to try again too! But it takes so long to get to the hard part, and failing means you have to start all over.
One very important feature of my maze is the ability to switch paths about 10 different ways in the same spot - that spot being the right side of the north entrance. You'll notice the row of turrets just south of that entrance (containing the northernmost freeze) is unconnected... the right end of that row has empty space for two turrets, one on top of the other. By switching them around a few times at the beginning of each spawn, I can keep them concentrated in the tiny mass you see - this ALSO means that come time for an air wave, I can get all the grounders out of the range of the plasma turrets... though for wave 93 I didn't, since I knew I was doomed.
The biggest modification I plan to make to my formation is to shift the westernmost three of my red plasmas to the right, into the positions occupied by the three white vulcans in the northernmost isolated row. This would allow all the plasmas to get in shots on the air strike coming from the north... I'd also move the freezer to the west entrance to stall those forces instead.
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Post by johannhowitzer on Sept 19, 2007 2:20:42 GMT
Necro posting this because I noticed something that seems important - something everyone, myself included, seems to have overlooked completely! The cost of a fully-upgraded DCA is about twice that of a blue DCA, for only 50% more power. I seemed to be doing much better early on with a menagerie of blues than I used to with only a few reds - they covered more territory, fired for longer, shot more missiles, meaning the added power for going red seems almost worthless, except once you become crowded in the center! I might even try setting up some blue DCA in front of the west entrance, to soften up the non-staggered ones. Will probably get back to you all on how it goes.
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Post by zerragon on Sept 19, 2007 8:55:33 GMT
Necro posting this because I noticed something that seems important - something everyone, myself included, seems to have overlooked completely! The cost of a fully-upgraded DCA is about twice that of a blue DCA, for only 50% more power. I seemed to be doing much better early on with a menagerie of blues than I used to with only a few reds - they covered more territory, fired for longer, shot more missiles, meaning the added power for going red seems almost worthless, except once you become crowded in the center! I might even try setting up some blue DCA in front of the west entrance, to soften up the non-staggered ones. Will probably get back to you all on how it goes. Remember that blue DCA have less range than the red ones, so the effective power reduction is more than 50%. I dont think itll work because of space problems in the maze. Ive had my best anti air attempt when putting 1 red freezes at both edges of each alien entrance. Done correctly, all air units are slowed, but still it seems impossible to pass the 93, not the least 100th, airwave. I even sold half my maze to fire up additional DCA power before wave 93, but no luck.... Im so done with this game !!!!
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