Very long Survivor times by some...

[XSS]

I'm struggling to get past 25 minutes in Survivor mode. And then i look at the global charts and some ppl were playing the map(s) for 1 hour and 28 minutes. Now i think that's just impossible.
At around 15 minutes mark, on most maps, massive hordes of tough behemoths, tanks and cybernetics appear. I can usually hold them off for a wave or two, but then they simply overrun my defenses no matter how much i upgrade them after that or use orbital support. Have tried many different approaches. Softening of enemies througout the map, combination of ALL towers, optimizing choke points etc etc. The most effective seem to be EMP's + Laser towers + some form of anti-air. This way i managed to hold of the lngest on most maps. But still over an hour less than those.
I'm a lng time Defense Grid player and have also tried optimizing the gameplay in all ways for days. Now either those guys know some special secret or they were just plain cheating.
Can anyone sheed some light on this? Thx

[deanjones145]

try using jackon on te volcano map
use the crictcal boosted lasers
plus some anti air
and build in donuts near the last two circles

emp to slow
but this technique should get u more than 30 minutes

[XSS]

I mostly prefer generals with Inhibitor towers, because throwing those damn flares gets really annoying and time consuming later in the game.

[MasterOfTheTide]

try using jackon on te volcano map
use the crictcal boosted lasers
plus some anti air
and build in donuts near the last two circles

emp to slow
but this technique should get u more than 30 minutes

I thought critical had little to no effect on constant damage towers? amidoinitwrong?

[maierhans]

I thought critical had little to no effect on constant damage towers? amidoinitwrong?

Over at SOL forums, a dev confirmed that lasers can be crit-boosted as well as speed-boosted. All Towers can be boosted. The only exception i know of are drones - they cannot inflict crit-damage.

And btw:
IMHO, Core-Towers for survival are: AntiAir, Radiation to crush bosses, lots of slow (especialy lvl1 Lightnin-Tower Spam, 20+) and a good balance of damage-types in general.

If your team has Range-boosters, boost some Lasers, Teslas and radiation. Its not the Lasers damage, but the ability to switch-snipe any target at will that makes them great when range-boosted.

[XSS]

But that just doesn't work at all. When i get 2 of those huge tanks and a behemoth, they always get past no matter how many of any kind of towers i have.

[Naed_draagur]

xss / if you want, we can play a game where i show you ? :)

because i know that its possible :)

[XSS]

Managed to last for 35 minutes with Viktor. But still, a hour and a half is still like few light years away... What's most annoying is to use Instagib in that freakin crowd. Been aiming at masive shielded tank and ended up hitting a freakin worthless leech.

@Naed_draagur
Maybe we should do that, so i can see how. There were videos on Youtube for Defense Grid (pretty cool to see solutions from other ppl) but couldn't found a single one for Sol Survivor. :(

[Naed_draagur]

The offer stands for all others too :)

xss / you can find me in the community listing under my name here :) Just add me and we will go from there :)

[iansmith]

Yeah, I can't last more than half an hour unless I use Inhibitors. All it takes is forgetting to drop a new flare for 15 seconds and you are screwed.

I can manage a bit an hour with Inhibitors so I don't have to split my concentration and time clicking on dropping flares all over the darn place. The boss wave around 1:05 always clobbers me.

Flares are the only serious flaw in the game design in my opinion. Everything else contributes to the massive fun.

[XSS]

Yeah, flares are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and totally annoying. Turrets should still see cloaked units, but only the ones very close to target. Similar to Defense Grid way of handling stealthed units.

[tuxdev]

It's a tradeoff. Flares are pretty much free, but require diligence. Inhibitors cost you mass that could be used to make towers that actually improve your defense directly, but require less multi-tasking. In Wars, flares are a pretty clear winner because they don't have upkeep (mass is worth more than energy). In Survival, you end up with so much mass that the cost of the inhibitor usually washes out (energy is worth more than mass). In the other modes, it's not clear which one wins, but personally I tend to lean towards flares because I prefer tactical play over strategic.

[Naed_draagur]

im with tuxdev on that one :D

[iansmith]

The problem with people (like me) who need to use Inhibitors is it really restricts who you can play as, especially in survival mode where you just can't deal with an hour of flares. Oh well, everyone has different skills and ideas of whats fun.

[Centy]

Yeah the difficulty on every mode is borked so that at 15-20 mins when the bikes bemhoks etc turn up the difficulty just spikes if somehow you survive that then it's easy from then on with 2 or more people using orbital but it's just the same game over and over and most people I play with just get disheartened when all the hard work suddenly seems worthless after 15 mins.

[aveneyer]

Read this post yesterday, and took the challenge...

Just posted up a time of 1h 9min 2sec- Just 10 seconds short of the top 10 on Land of Shadow using Ignacio Cazorla. I can't begin to explain how annoying an hour worth of flares was...

[ChaosEsper]

It's a tradeoff. Flares are pretty much free, but require diligence. Inhibitors cost you mass that could be used to make towers that actually improve your defense directly, but require less multi-tasking. In Wars, flares are a pretty clear winner because they don't have upkeep (mass is worth more than energy). In Survival, you end up with so much mass that the cost of the inhibitor usually washes out (energy is worth more than mass). In the other modes, it's not clear which one wins, but personally I tend to lean towards flares because I prefer tactical play over strategic.

It just doesn't seem like an equal trade to me

Flares are free but require constant maintenance and only reveal cloaked units.
Inhibitors cost money but require no further upkeep and reveal cloaked units in addition to preventing shield/health regen.

To me, the inhibitor seems to always win out :\

[deanjones145]

depends on the situation
i dont minds flares as i can pick up lanes to increase speeds of invisables (more costly for inhibitors)

like when those flying octopus comes, and there is two
i like the speed one up so i dont have to fight two at a time

[Doenerbude]

Up to an hour -> Easy
From an hour -> Damn hard

After an hour it feels like the Creeps get 9999999999-Zentillion HP

Try this with your friends. It works very well :)
http://bildupload.sro.at/p/356918.html

[Zorzil]

Up to an hour -> Easy
From an hour -> Damn hard

After an hour it feels like the Creeps get 9999999999-Zentillion HP

Try this with your friends. It works very well :)
http://bildupload.sro.at/p/356918.html
That's madness. :eek:

Once I get a feel for a map I can eventually push past the hour mark with some trial and error (although so far I've only really focused on Cwm and Land of Shadow), but 1h 20m+? Daaamn. I normally get crushed about 1h 2m-1h 3m or so.

I was practically bouncing off the walls when I managed to (barely) get my name onto the Land of Shadow scoreboard earlier today with 1h 9m 20s although I see I've since been pushed down to rank 14. :p

Some possible tips for the OP (and anyone else struggling) with Survival to try improve your times; this is how I do it -- bear in mind I play Yurevich, Brentford or Brimstone and play with the mindset of absolutely annihilating one spot with as much focus fire as possible, so of course your mileage may vary with these tactics if you pick a different officer or have a different playstyle. These times are also rough estimates, I don't strictly adhere to them every attempt.

0:00-10:00 Build a basic framework of level 1 towers around the main choke point, near provided boosters if possible. Whilst doing this, try to work in a mixture of all the different slow towers available to the officer.

10:00-15:00 Start upgrading the group of towers closest to the choke point to start pushing the creeps back. Light support usage if required to mop up leaks.

15:00-20:00 Key breaking point - continue to upgrade towers to level 3 to handle the boss wave. Drop Gas/Fire Bomb/EMP onto the first 'rush' of bosses as applicable, use booster support on your group of level 3 towers and focus fire the bosses down. Hopefully you should have enough incidental AoE to take out the junk creeps at the same time, if not use support to mop them up. Continue to upgrade towers during this and you'll eventually find the bosses drop inside the choke point unless you've designed your defense poorly.

20:00-30:00 Continue to upgrade the framework laid out before. Use focus fire and AoE support as required to deal with any occasional surges of bosses.

30:00-33:00 Start building another framework of level 1 towers that will focus onto the same area as the first. This is so that when the next boss rush comes, you have a mass of towers pre-placed for rapid upgrading as you get mass income.

~33:00-37:00 Around now you'll get another major surge of bosses with a health jump. Use support liberally to soften them up and focus fire them down whilst rapidly spending the mass on your waiting level 1 towers. If you find yourself leaking bosses at this point regardless, consider prioritising Behemoks over the others because they take off 10 lives as opposed to 5.

~37:00-50:00 Fairly straightforward. Continue building and upgrading. You may get another surge around the 50 minute mark, but with some support usage and focus fire you shouldn't really stumble at this point.

50:00-1:00:00 You'll notice the bosses becoming more and more resilient, but it shouldn't be too much to handle.

1:00:00 onwards All hell is about to break loose now. You'll get a very heavy boss surge sometime around this point and the health jump as Doenerbude states is very noticeable.

General Tips
1. Consider making tactical losses if required as long as your colonist count can handle it when you find your defenses are at breaking point.
e.g. if two bosses come together and your focus fire takes a very long time to take one down, you're likely not going to finish the other off in time and will be wasting valuable damage on something that will leak. Let it go and focus on the next boss in the pack that you have a good chance of stopping, especially if it is weak to your most common tower damage type.

2. Learn to love the upgrade hotkey. I found my Survival times rocketed once I discovered it. If you aren't already using it, it should have the default bind of F. Instead of having to click a tower and then upgrade, then the next tower etc., you can press the hotkey once then rapidly click towers to upgrade them, saving you half the work and more than half of the time. Its great for keeping your mass levels from spiralling as you essentially set yourself up to lose once you stop spending.

3. Try to have towers ready to upgrade at any given point and don't stop planning ahead. Its all about speed once you get into it - making sure that you can quickly shift back and forth from upgrading and support when under pressure is far more effective than attempting to build during a boss surge when all the projectiles and special effects are blocking the map grid!

And finally - I noticed a mention earlier in the thread of there being no Survival videos available. I recorded myself on Land of Shadow a few weeks back when I got a 1h 4m 29s with Yurevich to demonstrate to a friend how I do it as he was struggling.

I've since improved my strategy and gameplay a bit, but it may come in useful to someone. If anybody wants to see the video, I'll upload it onto my Dropbox. Bear in mind that at 16 minutes long (as I sped up the recording to 4x speed), it is too long for me to upload to Youtube itself so anyone wanting it would have to download the actual video file itself which clocks in at just over 1GB, so please don't request it if you're not willing to download such a large file. My upload speed isn't the greatest and it took me several hours before sending it to my friend.

[deanjones145]

1:00:00 onwards All hell is about to break loose now. You'll get a very heavy boss surge sometime around this point and the health jump as Doenerbude states is very noticeable.

at this stage its all about one thing

FEAR bosses to get extra seconds hehe