2019-05-11 17:17:42

so how is the best way to tackle the decay challenge then. because you obviously have to keep up with upgrades and such. this is going to take some planning me thinks.

2019-05-11 17:38:37

It's really not that hard, but it will take several runs to be successful.  I don't understand why you all won't attempt the challenge just because you won't succeed at it.  Success isn't the point.  The point is to power through to zone 40-50, gain a bunch of helium, perk up and try again.  Eventually, you will beat zone 55 and have access to garden maps, and even once you do, decay will be worth it.
There are no penalties for dropping a challenge mid-run.  If you get stuck at zone 45, drop the challenge and when you get bored, portal and repeat.
Being able to select garden maps is amazing because you also get that 20% loot increase while in a garden map.  It's incredible.

I'm probably gonna get banned for this, but...

2019-05-11 20:39:50

oh i have no issue with trying it at all. i'm more cureous as to the thoughts of others. i've just hit lvl 50 and got my first collector. so i'm now interested in how far i can now go. am going to try and catch up with my coordinations because i'm down a few. i didn't want to keep spending helium on wormholes. but equally i am trying to push as far as i can now. all i can say is wow i seriously need more gems. i thought i was producing a reasonable amount but i was only able to buy 1 collector then another one about 10 minutes later. luckily, i'm going out for dinner soon so i'm hoping to make the most of tributes and hopefully i can get another 2 or 3 when i get back. i'm stopping at level 50 for a while purely because i want to get more collectors until i've caught up.

2019-05-12 01:11:00

Coordinations get harder and harder to keep up with the higher you go, because of the space demand. Carpentry will mitigate that the higher it is, I'm sure, but I still end up having a backlog of coordinations in the mid 50's even with Carpentry at level 19. Mind you, I was working with a lower amount of resources due to aborting a Decay challenge and things were dragging too much for me to bear. I'm seeing the impact of Looting and Motivation and ?Carpentry on my progress, but I'm also impatient to get more cool stuff.

Right now, I'm doing Discipline as a Challenge 2. Hopefully that little extra attack/health bonus I'll get from this run will help me in my next Decay attempt, although I think I'll do another Balance run for extra helium before that attempt. All the good perks are getting kind of pricy now...

2019-05-12 01:25:44

well i'm definitely seeing the affects of carpentry. carpentry is brilliant. i need to check to see what my currant level of that is. i've managed to amass nearly 1600 helium. i'm going to try and keep going. i'm managing alright. my health is at around -400% it's just my attack that's barely at around 2%. still, it is progress. the further i can go though the better i can do in the long run though because i can get hopefully more rewards.

2019-05-12 01:55:07

I'd like to get further past breaking the planet in less time than I've been managing it, and then keep up with demand for longer. I'm starting to think I either shouldn't keep all my storage buildings at the same level, or that I should upgrade them more often, or that I need to buy more housing structures even though I go through them all fairly regularly. I always seem low on things I need at higher levels, while having too much wood at a point in the game where its only uses are in shield upgrades and nurseries, and nothing builds up fast enough. Then everything drags out and I get bored and portal because it's obvious I won't get past z70 on that run. I wouldn't mind going back to the beginning so much if I could make some damn progress...

2019-05-12 02:14:05

Hi all, I just pushed another decent-sized upgrade to the screen reader version!

This update mostly focuses on the map creation screen. I've added button and title labels to all of the buttons in the map creation screen, and added a few helpful auto-read things. For example, the "increment map level" and "decrement map level" buttons are now actual buttons that you can hit with the "B" key, they have a title that says what they do, and when you click one the new map level setting will be read out automatically. The sliders for loot, difficulty and size received a similar treatment, they have titles that say what they are, and changing a slider will read out the new setting to you.

The save/reset/recycle all buttons in the map chamber previously weren't being read by screen readers, this has now been fixed so that the entire chamber should be fully accessible. I messed around with it for a decent amount of time with NVDA and was able to do everything I needed to do in the map chamber.

I also added an H4 to the map fragment cost, so you can use 4 to navigate around the map chamber with more proficiency now!

Unrelated to the map chamber, I've also removed roman numerals from golden upgrades and equipment prestiges on the screen reader version, hopefully this makes things a little easier.

What would you guys like to have improved next?!

2019-05-12 04:07:26

@Greensatellite: Love the changes to the map screen.  I'm so glad you haven't gotten sick of us yet!  I do have a few suggestions/concerns though.
1.  All of the tooltips that ask you to press s are specific to NVDA.  Each screen reader has a different keystroke to move to the next or previous separator object.  I was thinking it might help non-NVDA users if the tooltips specified why people were supposed to press s, e.g. 'press s, or the appropriate move to next separator object key for your Screen Reader.'  That or you could just have a prompt show up when you open the game notifying people that the game is specifically optimized for NVDA.
2. I'm very close to the life challenge, and I've been trying to think of ways of making it accessible.  Having cells updating every second may make it hard to track information down, but a good start might be to turn the entire zone/map view into a table that dynamically updates based on what's going on.  I don't know how easy this is to do, or if NVDA would even handle it well, but a good start could involve just turning the zone into a table, and you could have the cell that the player's trimps are on have an x placed on it to see how people like it.  If thing are happening too quickly, we can always press pause.  If we're able to figure this part out though, personal spires should be a piece of cake, and those are really the only thing I care about. lol  Tower Defense games are few and far between in the blind community.  I only know of 1!
I'm tempted to grab a high level save from Reddit and see how accessible all of that stuff is so I can offer more direct feedback before I actually reach that point on my own save.
Anyway, thanks so much for all this work you've done to make this game a breeze to play.  As you can probably tell, we are all loving it on this forum and I've gotten several other blind folks to play.    Keep up the amazing work!

I'm probably gonna get banned for this, but...

2019-05-12 04:16:09

As for the rest of you lot!!!
I read through my post this morning and it sounded unnecessarily harsh.  I wasn't irritated at all. lol
I had just finished my last assignments of the semester and I had been up all night, so sorry about that!
Carpentry definitely does get better and better.  I've reached the point where I don't start falling behind on coordination till past zone 60, which makes the 50s a walk in the park.  A lot of these issues you all are facing now will also be issues you face down the road.  You'll just have different tools to solve them.
and yes, I understand that impatience.  It's why I sometimes talk myself into going on Kong and buying bones for bone portals. 
What kind of ratio do you all have your workers set to?
Do you use your wood on gyms?  Block is still incredibly useful even past zone 60, because things don't pierce on maps.  In fact, I've been sitting on a zone 101 map for the past 24 hours because I have 4 voidmaps that I have to complete before I portal.  I'm held back by my painfully low block, so I've been building gym after gym for the last day.  Don't overlook gyms.  Even by zone 50, gyms will be providing the majority of your block.  Build as many as you can.  Forget that ridiculous shield until after zone 60, but even then, build tons of gyms!
Keep in mind that if you click on an element, e.g. your attack, you'll be shown a table that lists all of the factors that contribute to the stat that you have.  This helped me a lot because I never actually realized how much gymystic upgrades contributed to block.  When you look at the upgrade description, it looks pretty pittiful. lol
Anyway, you got this!  You'll have so much helium after you ccross the planet-breaking point that the 50s will be a breeze, but don't worry, you'll probably get stuck in the 70s for a while too.  hahaha

I'm probably gonna get banned for this, but...

2019-05-12 06:05:09

I've broken the planet a few times and only made it to 70 once. Even then, I didn't complete it.

Oh, okay! I thought the block-piercing happened on maps too, but I'm glad that's not the case!

I like the updates to the map screen! Now I can adjust the type of map without accidentally decreasing the level! big_smile

I'm trying a new approach where I don't level eq between prestiges unless I absolutely must. Maybe I'll get farther if I just stop to grind for prestiges every few zones and don't waste metal on leveling the current tier unless I'm dying hard. We'll see how that goes.

2019-05-12 07:17:10

Hello greensatellite

I really thank you for what you have done toward us here. I've grabbed a few of high level saves, indeed I was curious especially about that spire and mastery thing. And those spire layout is ... very confusing for me tongue I even couldn't understand what should I do, at all. It would be awesome if you can do something about it.

As for my progress, I am starting to try to pass zone 50s, carpentry is awesome indeed. Thinking if I should start to do that scientist challenge now or not ...

good day
togira
sorry for my bad english

2019-05-12 14:13:32

am at z54 and this is my currant stats.
Attack: 522T ATK, 1.32% of Enemy Health
Health: 1.90Qa HP, -814% lost per Enemy Attack
Block: 27.7Qa

lol anybody think i can break the planet?

2019-05-12 14:37:02

Definitely!
If not, you can stop on a map and build more gyms!

I'm probably gonna get banned for this, but...

2019-05-12 16:19:16

now at z55
Attack: 688T ATK, 0.83% of Enemy Health
Health: 2.52Qa HP, -4026% lost per Enemy Attack
Block: 129Qa
unfortunately my attack is really low. any suggestions?

2019-05-12 17:10:09 (edited by Dark 2019-05-12 22:01:10)

wow love the new changes to the map screen. I admit I
got a bit stuck on the scientist ii challenge for a few days since I bought a shield upgrade by mistake where I should've been focusing on coordinations, then finally decided to restart.
those roman numeral fixes will be nice when I start hitting high levels again.

I'll say as far as multiple screen reader fixes go, supernova,the other screen reader I used also had S as move to next separator, I imagine its specifically Jaws that is having the issue, but if Jaws has a separator key I don't know.

As for next thing to fix, I'd appreciate if the challenges screen could please get some examination, in particular distinguishing the version 2 of various challenges. I'd also please like a stacks fix for the decay challenge and maybe other challenges that use stacks similar to the balance challenge, since I don't imagine decay will be easy if I can't monitor number of stacks of decay from moment to moment.

As regards Aaron77's above comments  with the life challenge, one thing I am not exactly sure of looking at the wiki is to what extent the player actually has practical control over what cells do what, or whether the player simply has to wait and see if the next cell is alive or dead before  deciding to take it on or not, since however sophisticated the algorithm controlling the actual life or not of the cells in a given area, the player must still advance cells 1-100, and it'd be easy enough to simply stick a status line somewhere informing the  player of the status of the next few cells along the way, EG "Dead cell in 5" or "dead cell in one" , so that if the player wanted to avoid live or dead cells they could just wait to advance or not at their leisure.

Again not having got to that challenge yet myself I'm not sure.

Either way thanks again for the fixes, and for myself the moral of the story seems to be, if you really aren't succeeding trying again usually works big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-05-12 20:38:46

I wondered that about the life challenge too. When I turn Auto fight off, my current army still fights until they die and I can't stop that. Pausing the game would also prevent the cells from changing, so that would not be useful either... Unless I'm missing something?

2019-05-12 23:08:55

ok so am at z58 which means i have a question on z60 and beyond. i read somewhere i think it's post z60 that at the end of each zone 10% of your nurseries are shut down. how do people cope with this considering that they don't get cheaper?

2019-05-12 23:18:53

That's not what happens.

Your breeding decreases by a factor of ten, meaning you're breeding at one-tenth the speed you were before z60. Your nurseries don't get shut down, but I think Geneticists have some more impact on the breed speed. I've never used them, so I'm not sure on all the details.

2019-05-13 01:02:50

After you break the planet at z59, your breed speed all goes down to a tenth of what it was previously.
Nurseries still give you an extra %1 on your breed speed, but obviously with the hole speed decreasing that effect is smaller, though to be honest without that the game would be a little too easy.

Geneticists actually have the opposite effect to nurseries, they decrease breed speed by a factor of %2 each, but add an extra %1 to your trimps' health.

According to the wiki there is a perk which has something to do with your trimps breed time and for which its necessary to have a certain balance of geneticists and nurseries, but since I've not got that yet myself, the best way I've found around it is to pick a round number of nurseries, say 500 or 600 then balance out each geneticist purchase with two nurseries on top of that.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-05-13 01:41:34

@Dark:  It is actually possible to view stacks easily.  The amount is next to the amount of trimps fighting, e.g. Trimps (725M) 30

As for the life challenge, I believe the idea is if you are approaching the virus, you head to the maps screen then return to instantly kill off the army that was sent out.  It's cruel, but cruelty is the name of the game!
Yeah, breeding speed does slow down around zone 60, but it picks right back up again really quickly a few zones in, at least till you get geneticists.

I'm probably gonna get banned for this, but...

2019-05-13 01:47:44

1 more zone to go! got over 2000 helium now. i wonder when i will have to stop?

2019-05-13 04:41:19

Well, I broke it. Those last two zones they couldn't touch me but I was only doing about 10qa damage verses their 600qa. I'd like to do that again, get some more perks then go on once I can't afford anything with the helium.

thanks,
Michael

2019-05-13 16:40:05

Glad for the updates, gotta grab it!
I've reached zone 100 2 days ago, with about 18 missing coordination upgrades.
Since then, I've been using daily challenges to get lots of helium and My carpentry bonus is 1869% or something.
I still have 3 or so coords to get around zone 80, but it could and has been worse big_smile

2019-05-13 19:38:29

how do you access the daily challenges?

2019-05-13 19:48:01

oops,
I should've probably said:
S
P
O
I
L
E
R

They are at zone 100.
It's basically a never ending bunch of randomly generated challenges that give helium.