Weekly Seed #122 [Beta 6] [Seed: PrecisionLaserSegregator]

[zxc]

This week's seed: PrecisionLaserSegregator



The Weekly Seed is open to anyone, and we encourage you to share your experiences, stories, and tactics over the course of your run.

The rules are as follows:

• The Weekly Seed begins from the date this thread is posted and lasts about seven days.
• Make sure you are running the correct version of Cogmind (see thread subject).
• Enter the seed and abort your current game to initiate the seed (more details are below).
• Verify you are not running the tutorial and that the screenshots below match your game.
• Play through the game once. This is a friendly event and we are all honest people.
• When finished, post your scoresheet here (it should be the newest file in /scores) and any other screenshots/stories/strategies you wish to share with the community.
• If you want to share details about the seed or your approach, make sure you use spoiler tags.
• Due to the spoilerific nature of this thread, be sure to avoid reading details about the seed if you haven't completed your run.
• As Cogmind now has multiple difficulty modes and challenges which will affect the world generation, by default it is assumed everyone is playing on regular difficulty with no challenges enabled. You are free to use whichever settings you wish, but if you intend on discussing it, be sure to specify what difficulty/challenges you're using!

Good luck and have fun!



HOW TO ENTER A SEED

Press F1 to go to the MENU, select OPTIONS, select Seed, and enter this week's seed:




Select GAME, select ABORT:




If you have followed the steps [Manual seed applied: PrecisionLaserSegregator] should display in the log window.

Congratulations on entering the seed, now get in there!

[Kyzrati]

Yay, back to streaming again!

So my real (first) seed run is sad since I technically died in the Mines of all places while fooling around, so not really worth posting the stats here. Too bad I wasn't paying attention xD

Then I immediately started another run of the same seed and spent a few hours on that, making it into the late-game. The video of today's run can be found here, including the first (very short) failed run to preserve the conversation and continuity. (The restart happens around the 20-minute mark... How embarrassing )

The main strategy was combat, as per usual, though overall a pretty suboptimal run. It didn't matter too much since decent tactics made it possible to avoid getting dragged into too many fights. A number of times I had sensors and a nice terrain scanner to help navigate between rooms, so everything was going really smoothly all the way up to -4.

At that point I was considering going for the Straight Shot achievement, a win without visiting branches since I'd managed to missed everything along the way anyway. Then I found an Upper Caves exit and viewers wanted me to go in since it's more fun so I did that. Sure enough, fun awaited...

I'll spoiler this bit so I can talk freely about late-game branch events (the rest of the spoilers are just images).

W

Immediately on entering the caves I was greeted by the Derelict recruiting for Warlord, opening the shortcut right there! That was nice, and once inside I found a full stash of Vortex weapons right away, then the dude himself.

Being on treads I was slow, however, so the base attack occurred before I had even barely gotten inside. I also heard Demolishers at the entrance, and this turned out to be very very bad news. That early in the fight they mostly obliterated the defenses, so by the time I returned there was nothing left! The counterattack still took a while to kick in and I was left to defend the front gate myself.

I hoped for an easy northern exit but no such luck, and had to pass by the entrance again to seek out the lower emergency exit... Clearly I wasn't going to fight out the main gates all on my own. So I gradually fought my way back down there, and of course there are endless enemies streaming in.

Did I mention I have not had a single launcher all game? A decent launcher makes base defense far easier since they're all funneled through the entrance, but nope. Dual Lrn. Proton Cannons had been doing a lot of work up until this point, but even those got shot off eventually.

What made things much worse is that I couldn't run from the two squads of Imps... They pretty much trashed me, and I pulled out my entire stash of Vortex but it was too late to effectively fight all the Grunts and Hunters...

Spoiler

Making my stand for a bit after making it south of the entrance (here I still have my Vortex which I'm about to use, but without any defenses they got shot off pretty quickly):


The Lance saving my life:

[close]

With my trusty Lance (it saved my life a number of times--always carry a spare melee weapon!), I made my way out the southeast and circled around to the exit, safe!

[close]

Okay, sorta safe. The result was me coming back through the Proximity Caves, one of the most deadly areas of the game, mostly naked and very low on core integrity...

That was where things got exciting though, with a lot of close calls and just barely making it back to Research alive! Aw yeah.

Spoiler

Welcome to proxy caves! (I lanced the Programmer to death and it kindly contributed the single antigrav system that made my escape possible)

[close]

I managed to rebuild pretty quickly, and among my finds got hold of a bunch of armored treads, Adv. Weapon Cyclers, and there were tons of HERF Cannons. Research was practically a HERF farm.

Rather than search forever for a way up, I took a branch exit since I'm eager to reach -2/Research since I know what's going to happen there. This run is highly winnable.

We'll see if I can manage it when I pick up again with another stream in two days...

(I have no idea which branch I'm in, but we'll find out then )

Spoiler

Here's the build I entered with:

[close]

[Joshua]

Yay, back to streaming again!

So my real (first) seed run is sad since I technically died in the Mines of all places while fooling around, so not really worth posting the stats here. Too bad I wasn't paying attention xD]

I went back and looked to check - it looks like you had 93 integrity right before the cave-in, so that did quite a bit of damage.

[Kyzrati]

Yeah that's another reason to be surprised here

I have to investigate, but IIRC it's using standard cave-in code (which it really shouldn't...) and it's possible that I got pushed to the side and hit by multiple cave-ins? Not sure, but anyway will be changing that. Didn't realize that event could actually kill.

[Kyzrati]

Part 2, the grand conclusion! It really did turn out pretty epic, and unsurprisingly the final three maps took longer than the entire rest of the run combined

I've uploaded the entire part 2 to YouTube here.

Being the late game it's mostly spoilers, so:

spoilers (the others are images)

It turns out we were in Quarantine at the end of the last stream, and that ended up being mostly uneventful, except for a Watcher that decided to alert a nearby Alpha 7 to our presence. With Cyclers and HERF Cannons, though, I managed to corrupt it to death after a while, and even got to take its Multirail, which came in really handy later for destroying Programmers.

Spoiler

Taking out a Programmer while waiting for the Alpha 7 which is about to come through the door:

[close]

The only other great find (which saved my life later, more than once!), was the Teleportation Lab, from which I took a slip node and some reconstructors.

Sadly after being stripped in Part 1 I never recovered my Lrg. Storage, so from this point I was wasting slots on Med. Storage while also suffering from a relatively small inventory size despite having plenty of tread support to carry more :/

So I could only take so many of the good items I found.

As expected, -2/Research was a relative breeze with Warlord's help, so I used the opportunity to improve my build.

Warlord was on the far side of the map and died shortly before I could reach him . But Team Warlord was mostly crushing the opposition, which was great.

Spoiler

Yep, I do believe they've been busy down here...

[close]

I also ended up switching from treads to Centrium Legs after coming across a huge stockpile of them. Both faster and more integrity than my treads.

Spoiler

State before heading into Access:

[close]

We finally found our first launcher of the entire run in Access, and it came in handy in a few spots!

Spoiler

[close]

Despite having brought some decent hackware along and being totally prepared for an Access(Main) to get bearings on the exit, I managed to cover much of the map without coming across a usable Terminal xD

It was battle after battle snaking across the map... ending up exploring about two-thirds of the map and finding Command after getting beat up pretty bad and hitting High Sec!

When High Sec came, it was clear that fighting wasn't going to be an option with my mediocre build and no idea where the exit was, so it was time for a last-minute switch to evasive flight.

At the suggestion of a viewer earlier in Access I had grabbed a pair of Cld. Nuclear Pulse Thruster prototypes, which basically saved the day here. I created a third by duplicating it with the Subatomic Replicator. Oh yeah that was a decent find in Q as well

Spoiler

Emergency rebuilding!

[close]

Just before rebuilding, a couple patrols spotted me from the hallway and I blocked them in the door and took them all out with a single Hyp. Railgun (buffed by the Adv. Target Analyzer).

So from this point it was all about exploring as quickly as possible, trying to get out before High Sec crushed me (and the dreaded Investigators show up). Just me and my Scythe chopping through wall after wall zig-zagging my own path across the map.

Eventually we spotted the exit to Command and decided that surface exit was probably in one of the smaller areas I'd passed up earlier on the far side of the map... The remaining sequence of events was crazy, and went more or less like this:

• Was getting low on energy with quite a few bots on my tail, including a Saboteur
• Stepped into a room with a Smartbomb Launcher to grab that before teleporting away, losing everything.
• Circled all the way back to the other side of the map, dodging everything along the way.
• Noticed an area with a layout that looked almost certainly like the exit, approached and confirmed--and also ran into an Investigator at the same time!
• Retreated around to an adjacent room and chopped up the wall next to the gate, dropping a slip node there.
• They detonated the node next turn, blasting open the gate, wall, and Access shell--exit was right there!
• The Investigator also caught up, with a bunch of friends in tow, and put me in stasis within sight of the exit!
• Pulled out my launcher and destroyed him in one hit, then eventually dragged myself out of stasis to the exit

Wow was that close.

Some screenshots of the end:

The moment the Investigator appeared--retreeeaaaat!

Spoiler

[close]

Not too surprising but the point-blank slip node took out all my failing propulsion. This was right before I got put in a stasis bubble and annihilated that Investigator at the front.

Spoiler

[close]

Freeeee!!!

Spoiler

[close]

Final score was just so-so, considering I had zipped through most of the world.

Spoiler

[close]

[close]

Next we'll stream some runs that don't go for a win, just pure fun stuff

[nuzcraft]

Hey! Since spring finals are done, I jumped back in with my first run of Beta 6! (unfortunately, summer school has started up  )

This was a super fun run for me. I got to see 4 (4!) branches that I hadn't seen before and had a really good time with the achievements.

Right off the bat, I knew I wanted to do a combat run, so I started picking up as much stuff and kinetic weapons as I could. Most of the early game was an infowar type build, with my utility slots filled with sensors, large storage units, and a targeting computer (so good!).

My first achievement was...Loot Pinata! (Destroy a Hauler) followed by Crack Shot (Hit 10 shots in a row).  I had a good time messing up mats.

In sublevel 9, I went into storage, looking for some good loot. I managed to stir up some trouble with the newly implemented drone release feature, which was a whole lot of fun.

getting into some branchy stuff

Post-storage, I headed into the caves, aided by my infowar build and found both DM and Z. I got imprinted, passed on heading to ZDC, and headed back into factory.

In sublevel 5, I used Z-hacks to great effect, getting some useful info, as well as a bunch of friends (including my first hero!). At some point I got some info on the entrance to Ext. I remembered having a conversation with b_sen from the discord chat about how cool that branch chain was, so I decided to head that way. I'd never been to Cet. before since I never had a signal interpreter and always chose the wrong exit.

Once in Ext., I headed the long way as doors magically opened before me. I used the terminals to get more friends, and we made short work of the behemoths. I saved a certain someone, and headed into Cetus.

I didn't do a whole bunch of exploring in Cetus, because I was scared of the Cetus Guards. This was kind of unfortunate, since I didn't get to use my special friends code. Oh, well, maybe next time.

From here, I headed into the next new branch in the chain, Archives. This place would have been super cool, but I couldn't access the terminals . Either they were broken in the crossfire, or imprinting affected my ability to access them, I'm not sure. I'll have to try again later.

Overall, Archives was kind of uneventful, so I headed into Hub_04. Seemingly immediately, I knew this was going to be tough. I blasted my way around (losing most of my friends) until I came to a big machine. Obviously, I blew it up, which caused a level-wide alert to go out...uh oh. Upon a bit of exploring, I found an exit, but decided to keep going, until I opened a door and...lightnings. RUN AWAY! I booked it to the nearest exit and made it to sublevel 4 in one piece.

That sequence of branches seems really, really cool. I think I'm going to try for it again next time, maybe without imprinting? Or maybe with a flight build.  Factory was pretty uneventful (if I remember correctly) and I headed into Research.

At some point, I got some intel on the branch exits from this level and decided to go to the one I hadn't been to before, Armory. This is where things got really tough.

I lost a bunch of my infowar in a sequence of fights as I looked for the exit. I think I was in a main patrol area, but didn't have a good way of getting out. I found a couple stashes of railguns, which worked wonders against programmers. Eventually, enough battles had taken place that I lost all my storage units and spare propulsion, right as I triggered high sec (also my first time!). I tried to run for it, but had no idea where the exit was. In hindsight, I should have probably dropped everything and gone with core propulsion to try to get away.

[close]

At any rate, it was a marvelous run with a decent score to boot!

Scoresheet-28521

http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/scores/180508/180508/nuzcraft-180518-211316-0-28521.txt

[close]

This run will eventually be uploaded to my youtube channel. Check it out for a bunch of Cogmind content.

[Kyzrati]

Nice, 62 achievements on your first run, and all those new maps

Cool that you were able to go all the way through the Extension branch on your first visit. Definitely lots to do there and it's worth a good many trips! I passed the entrance myself on stream earlier today, but too bad was in SG mode so couldn't enter... Maybe next time.

And dang, high sec in A xD