default header

Cosmic War

Insomnia Cosmic War #3

Moderator: JC Denton

Insomnia Cosmic War #3

Unread postby icycalm » 29 Jan 2022 02:11

Date: January 29, 2022
Time: 23:00 UTC
System: A War of Ice and Fire
Designer: icycalm
Version: 1.0.0
Download: http://cosmicwar.net/systems/a-war-of-i ... ire-v1.pas

Image

Image

Cosmic War wrote:A classic icycalm setup: Two massive 1300-radius planets, an ice-water and a lava one, orbiting around the sun while being orbited by one moon each. Only the lava planet can be landed on, to ensure that no team gets an entire planet or region to itself at the start. The planets are quite far apart too, so abandoning the lava planet entirely is a risky strategy, which may however pay dividends if pursued with full convinction. The moons can be smashed, but only via an uholy number of thrusters, to ensure long wars. It's a fairly simple setup, perfect for beginners to wrap their heads around, but with plenty of space for expansion so they can experience the game's epic scale and scope.


This is an improvement on my Ultimate Bicephalic system from Cosmic War #2. Normally I wouldn't run the same system twice in a row, but it was a full year ago almost to the day that we played the last war, so repetition isn't an issue. I am more concerned with ensuring a fun war that doesn't get too out of hand and scare our new players, and this is the ultimate system to achieve this while still giving us a massive war.

The improvements come in the form of two moons, each orbiting one planet. The metal on the planets too is no longer evenly spaced, but clumped together as incentive to build strong bases instead of weak, sprawling ones like last time. The moons have a decent amount of metal, and require 8 thrusters to be smashed, which is a lot of dough.

Image

Only the lava planet can be landed on initially. You can land anywhere, ignore the landing zones, there's no way to remove them in the system designer, I don't think. When you load the map in the game, they won't be there.

Image

This is the lava planet, PYROMANTARIA. We will all spawn there, so it's pretty much guaranteed some people will spawn on each other. Better brush up your com-boxing skills, if you find the time. Commander-boxing is a skill in its own right, but people don't tend to get good at it because in normal games the landing zones ensure everyone lands far from each other. In Insomnia events there will almost never be landing zones, so we need to learn to com-box. You basically need to decide quickly if you will engage or run away, but note that running away screws you over big-time because the commanders walk extremely slowly, and when they're walking they aren't building, which means that other players who aren't com-boxing are getting a massive start on you. One way to counter all this in a team game is to land together with one or more of your mates. Then you can probably destroy fairly quickly a lone enemy commander who landed in your midst. You'll STILL be falling behind the other teams in production, but it won't be as bad as if you lost an entire commander in the early-game. Three commanders landing together will probably be invincible, unless they are very unlucky and more than one enemy lands on top of them, in which case it'll be quite the carnage, and everyone involved probably won't make it to the late-game.

So as you can see, spawn selection is terribly important, which is why you'll have 15 minutes to discuss strategy with your teammates once the teams are known. There is a tremendous range of options even in the single-planet-landing that we'll be using for this war. And once the landing's done, things merely escalate from there, as you can choose to dig into the planet, go for the moon, or even abandon that part of the system altogether and head for the distant ice-water planet and its moon. You can spread out trying to grab everything, or you can laser-focus on one objective and try to secure that.

Since the teams will be 3-man, and since one of the players will be a rookie, a good plan would be: the best player goes somewhere alone, and the other two team up, with the better player doing the base and the rookie moving his army around. This is a solid plan for this war, and given the team size and player experience levels, but other valid approaches exist, including three separate spawns, or everyone landing together.

Try to think up some strategy you'd like to pursue well ahead of the war, so that when you find out who your teammates are, and the 15-minute countdown starts, you have a solid grasp of your options and your opinions on the strategy to give your teammates.

Don't worry if the possibilities and challenge seem too much, and you've no idea what to do. We're all in this same boat! Revel in the complexity, pick some strategy, and pursue it and find out where it leads! That's the whole fun here, and it's a kind of fun no other game can give you!

Image

Image

Image

Note that the moons seem huge because I am zoomed-in on them. They are actually small compared to the planets: 500 radius compared to 1300.

If you have ideas or tips to give people, go ahead and post them here. If you would rather keep your thoughts to yourself, and try to surprise people on the battlefield with them, do that. Or if you want to give feedback on the system, or suggestions, etc. do that here. Or if you want to discuss how things went after the war, again use this thread.

See you on the battlefield,


-icy
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Re: Insomnia Cosmic War #3

Unread postby icycalm » 29 Jan 2022 02:23

Some tips on com-boxing:

Build a turret asap. The person who gets out a turret first has a huge advantage. Then build a little wall in front of yourself: you can shoot from behind it, but the enemy will first have to destroy the wall to get to you. And finally use your uber cannon: hit D to activate it, then left-click on the enemy commander, but beware because it has a charge-up time.

That's probably NOT the ultimate com-boxing technique, but it's a start. If you want to get deeper into it, google it or ask people, or just try it and try to improve it.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands


Return to Cosmic War

cron