Juggernauts--How do I stop them?

[Solovox]

I will make it quite far in survival mode and have 15-20 siphon cannons, rail guns, discharge blasters, emp mines, etc, and nothing seems to stop them. What's the trick, folks?

Also: it seems that people are using Cheat Engine or something on some of these high scoring replays. They are getting wiped out at wave 60 and then suddenly they have 100 lives again. WTF?

[TitanMan]

Raw damage output from individual output can only go so far. You need a combination of path length and various synergies between the defesnses. It's very hard to give you a straight answer without looking at your game. Looking at the replay could give you an idea of what works but it's always more fun to figure it our yourself if you ask me.

If you find something weird about a particular replay, please let us know. Due to some bugs, the might be some inaccuracies here and there. But there's always cheater among them. So if it's something like what you have mentioned, that might be it. So let us know and we'll take a look at it and remove it.

[Marauder]

Originally posted by Solovox:

I will make it quite far in survival mode and have 15-20 siphon cannons, rail guns, discharge blasters, emp mines, etc, and nothing seems to stop them. What's the trick, folks?

Also: it seems that people are using Cheat Engine or something on some of these high scoring replays. They are getting wiped out at wave 60 and then suddenly they have 100 lives again. WTF?

Yep, many of the top if not all of the top scorers are blatantly cheating. Which makes having achievments for it even more funny. Devs are basically saying you have to cheat to 100% the game. Even if that wasn't intentional.

[Taencred]

Please report any supposed cheaters, with names and why you think they're cheating. I should note that our replay system is far from perfect. You'll occasionally see desyncs that make it seem like people die or are leaking when they didn't in the actual game. Although it generally shouldn't be that extreme.

[Solovox]

I'm not aware of how to share a particular replay, but I've seen replays in the top scores Survival mode (the basic map). Just check out the top two or three. They get absolutely wiped out and then suddenly have 100 lives again. Another top score they suddenly had $20K in credits on the second wave. As far as my strategy I had the 37th highest score with the basic map as of yesterday, maybe you could find it that way? I did a little better incorporating missile launchers, but I still couldn't stop Collosus units.

[Balantar]

its worth noting some towers are great, some ok and some just suck. The Pulserays with the power pack are great plasma cannon are ok and inertia blasters are just bad. you need to mix anti armour and anti shields with a lot of AOE and EMP. Also some give good upgrades to others +15% attack speed from the missile launcher is nice even though they are meh as a tower.

[Taencred]

Originally posted by Solovox:

I'm not aware of how to share a particular replay, but I've seen replays in the top scores Survival mode (the basic map). Just check out the top two or three. They get absolutely wiped out and then suddenly have 100 lives again. Another top score they suddenly had $20K in credits on the second wave. As far as my strategy I had the 37th highest score with the basic map as of yesterday, maybe you could find it that way? I did a little better incorporating missile launchers, but I still couldn't stop Collosus units.

We've reviewed the replays at rank 1 and 2 and found no indication that they might be cheating. If you noticed them get wiped out at some point, it's possible there was a desync. At least when I watched it back I didn't see either of them wiped out, but I didn't watch through beyond wave 50.

I checked out your replay. Your setup is mostly AoE, and you're not enhancing that AoE(Damage Amp/Slow etc) which perhaps could have been enough to bring you a little further with just AoE damage.
All you have for single-target is your Siphon Cannons, and they will prioritize the support units first. Juggernauts which is just raw HP, will therefore mostly take damage from your AoE until they're close to leaking.

[Solovox]

Thanks, I'll make these strategy changes! The suspicious refill of lives happened on wave 61 on one of the top replays I watched btw.

[Taencred]

Cool, we'll check that wave specifically as well.

[Solovox]

Originally posted by Taencred:

Cool, we'll check that wave specifically as well.

Check out the #2 high score on Blank Canvas. 'VurAnoTon' Gets completely wiped out at wave 61, but then appears to keep playing and suddenly gets more credits and lives.

[TitanMan]

Thanks. I have taken a look at both the replays in depth.

First, I should explain that the replay system is not perfect, it desync horribly in some cases. Unfortunately it's not a problem we can just fixed while we are still developing the game. Any new features, mechanic changes could introduce new ways to desync the replay. So we built in an auto-correct system to try to address that while we try to work on the issue. How it works is the replay file contains the stats from each wave, and while replaying, it adjust the numbers to match the recorded stats. With this we can continue with the next wave in a 'correct' state even when the replay has desynced in the last wave.

With that in mind, what you see (the instant refill of life and adjustment of credits) is the game try to auto correct the replay. Looking at the replay, with access to the numbers and event in the background, I can see that there's a desync with both replays. The top replay in particular has a completely broken path starting in wave 55 which leads to the lost of life in all subsequent wave. But if you jump to wave60, bypassing the desync, there's no broken path and no lost of life.

Same goes with the 2nd replay, there's a desync prior to wave 60. But there's nothing out of the ordinary if I just look at the recorded stats.

TLDR: the replay system is faulty but it auto corrects. So what you see is not really an indication of cheating. Not saying that it's impossible but there's no clear indication in both case. My apologies for the confusion.

[Solovox]

Ok, understood! And that's actually a relief to know the top scores are legit. Still struggling to get to wave 120 (or past wave 70 to be honest), but now I know it's just me not yet being an Axon TD genius. Thank you.

[Taencred]

Originally posted by Solovox:

Ok, understood! And that's actually a relief to know the top scores are legit. Still struggling to get to wave 120 (or past wave 70 to be honest), but now I know it's just me not yet being an Axon TD genius. Thank you.

Just to be clear, the ones reaching wave 120 on Hard are people who have found ways to abuse the current balance in various ways. You're not expected to even really get past wave 75 on Hard.

[Solovox]

Originally posted by Taencred:

Originally posted by Solovox:

Ok, understood! And that's actually a relief to know the top scores are legit. Still struggling to get to wave 120 (or past wave 70 to be honest), but now I know it's just me not yet being an Axon TD genius. Thank you.

Just to be clear, the ones reaching wave 120 on Hard are people who have found ways to abuse the current balance in various ways. You're not expected to even really get past wave 75 on Hard.

Well I have certainly found Marauders to be apparently immune to any kind of damage, including insults and foul language. It kind of limits my interest in trying over and over again because I know I'm not making it past wave 60 or so.

[Solovox]

Originally posted by Taencred:

Originally posted by Solovox:

Ok, understood! And that's actually a relief to know the top scores are legit. Still struggling to get to wave 120 (or past wave 70 to be honest), but now I know it's just me not yet being an Axon TD genius. Thank you.

Just to be clear, the ones reaching wave 120 on Hard are people who have found ways to abuse the current balance in various ways. You're not expected to even really get past wave 75 on Hard.

Check out 'wieahammer' replay on Blank Canvas. You'll only need to watch one wave.

[Taencred]

I did drop down the Marauder Base HP a bit in 1.0. This will reduce their scaling a bit since that is a multiplier on the Base HP.