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[JackZeWap]

I got my first win last night

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

destination epsilon :} (no idea how else it's supposed to be done)

so today I did a less serious one. The first few attempts fell flat as I didn't find the equipment I needed to survive in the higher levels (infowar, hacking, propulsion, offense plan, etc.). This one, however, got all the way to -3 Research.

I had explored about half of the map using my current build, which used a lrg. storage unit and plenty of thrusters alongside great scanning and hacking gear. In the middle of the map, though, was a Heavy that blocked off the rest. I geared up some and killed it, but the fight itself and the cleaning up of reinforcements had stripped me of much of my flight and scanning gear.

Thus began the spiral. Reinforcement after reinforcement, errant patrols and endless programmers. The full set of treads that I had resorted to was broken down to nothing, and the only weapons I had left were a pair of gamma bomb launchers. I think I gained ~50% corruption from putting the legs I needed to move forward alone. By the time I made it maybe 40 tiles away from the first encounter, I was at over 90% corruption and putting on whatever I could find. The security was at maximum and I was running into ARC after ARC, destroying the squads with ease but losing more and more integrity. An expert squad came, with a stasis projector, though I killed them without too much issue despite all that. The one that got me, though, had an executioner. I lost the legs, and couldn't put on more without the corruption killing me. The corruption ended up killing me anyway, as programmers went and finished me off.

Most of the score, and most of my mental effort, was concentrated in that last floor. Cogmind truly is a game about stealth and attrition. There's no way in hell you get through the whole complex like that—not without extreme care and a hefty bit of luck as well. I wanted to try, though, which is why I committed myself rather than pulling out. God damn, though! I want a Cogmind where that maybe *is* a possibility. That would be cool. Not the game as it is, yes of course, and I wouldn't ask it to change. But still...

Anyway. Scoresheet is attached, if you're interested, as well as the screen I got on death. 20k score! Went out in a blaze of glory indeed.

[JackZeWap]

(forgot to add the screenshot. oops!)

[Kyzrati]

First of all, congratulations on the first win!

Going after Heavies is indeed quite dangerous, usually best avoided if at all possible unless you have an ace up your sleeve (of which there are many, of course, but still, Heavies can be big pain points, especially in Research anyway).

Once you hit high security you'd better have an exit already pinpointed, or a build ready to face even high sec head on

I will say though, definitely no luck required once you've built up the right combat skills! It's more dangerous, to be sure, but realize that the top players can defeat high sec on every single floor and win. Plus there are extended wins which are much harder than the regular game you've been playing, and they can reliably crush those too

There are a bunch of videos you can check out of folks doing this sort of thing, or crazier. Actually almost all of my own runs are full combat runs and I tend to win all of them unless I'm doing something stupid on purpose (you can find them archived on my YouTube channel). Among them I also did a run where I was sterilizing every floor (killing enough bots that they eventually evacuate everyone and fry the entire floor to burn you out), but for me while streaming that's also a relatively slow style so I quit after doing that four times through Factory xD). Even more recently I had a powerful build that got stuck with higher alert in -3/Research without enough time to find an exit and ended up high seccing and went ahead and just sterilized that floor using siege mode, shields, and good EX launchers.

Regardless of build type though, the last several floors require a much different mentality to succeed, and will really test your build and skills. To be sure, avoiding enemies that you don't gain anything from fighting is usually preferred, even with a heavy combat build, though there are also those who will show off and do stuff like lyrabold's recent run (at the top of the Beta 13 leaderboards right now) where they intentionally sterilized every floor, and continued clearing entire floors even into the extended game, killing all bosses and destroying a total of 11,865 robots

If you're interested in learning the ways of combat, I recommend checking out some videos or (perhaps more easily) visiting the spoiler channels on the Discord server, as that's where all the top players hang out and are happy to offer advice.

[Kyzrati]

Was reminded of this thread when nogimagogi posted their "stealth sterilization" today, taking out Armory with a pretty unique 5-cannon hacking treads build. Had over 130 kills in a single map, but that was without hitting high security through effective alert control. Most people don't bother with stealth sterilization if they're out to just smash everything, but it's a much safer way to clear an entire map if you can manage it