Reply With QuoteGun, Meteor and Temporal are my staples. One or two Missiles if the map calls for it, and some lasers for flavour. Concussion if there's somewhere worthwhile for it to go. I ignore all the other towers, pretty much.
[Sorry about the fail in the first take.]
I got my first gold medal on Defense Grid: The Awakening the other night. I learned the great joy of a row of red towers flanked on both sides by path. For reasons we won't discuss, it's been a few days since then, and it'll be a few days more before I can play it again. So my mind is reeling with abstract layouts and I must feed my obsession.
I read on the main forums that many leaders use only a few tower types (gun/cannon/inferno, gun/temporal/cannon, etc.). This makes me wonder about the Qt3 DG:TA addicts. Which towers do you use? (or not use?) And do you use most of the towers, diversifying your death portfolio, or do you just use a few types?
Gun, Meteor and Temporal are my staples. One or two Missiles if the map calls for it, and some lasers for flavour. Concussion if there's somewhere worthwhile for it to go. I ignore all the other towers, pretty much.
That's about what I used as well. I kept hearing that Cannon towers are way overpowered, but I'd always wind up slapping down a lot of Gun towers to start with (especially if mazing was needed), and never felt like I could spare the cost of Cannons.Originally Posted by Sam Jones
I used pretty much all the towers when getting gold medals, except for tesla and inferno. The gun towers form the backbone of all my builds, as they are pretty good against everything. Meteors are almost always good value because of their long range and the same is true (in lesser extent) for cannon towers. The command towers shouldn't be disregarded either. Even though their stealth canceling ability is not that critical, they provide a very tangible resource boost when placed in your main kill-zone.
Rather than say which ones to use the most, which ones don't get used? I only use Meteors and Concussion on grinder, otherwise they don't get used. I've only found one map where Telsa was worth it (other than using it simply to get a few of the achievements).
Cannons, Lasers and Temporals, with a few guns and one bad-ass inferno and command is my typical MO. I'll throw a missile in where needed (last stand needs two level 3 missiles at the end to prevent cores from being stolen).
The problem with Tesla towers is that they are a failsafe tower. And if you need failsafe towers your regular setup is wrong. I also get the impression they have low dps after the initial charge despite the arching.
In Grinder mode I only build Inferno, Laser and Meteor Towers combined with lot's of Temporal and Command.
Not a lot of shielded aliens on Grinder, I guess? Seems like that combo would be a fail for shields.
Good point about failsafes meaning you did something wrong. I agree with that -- seems like even charged, upgraded Teslas aren't going to be much output relative to the rest of your total layout, and that makes the last-kill margin extremely small. Still, probably fun to experiment with.
Is this xbox live or computer?
Computer. Haven't heard anything about a Live version, though it would probably rock.
Same here, except that I do use Cannon towers, especially in areas where their extended range allows them to cover different parts of a looping path. I hate having to build Missile towers because it bugs me that they're only useful against flyers, so I prefer using Cannons and regular Guns against flyers whenever possible.
Guns are my staple too, which annoys my wife who likes to watch me play this game (and not much else). She keeps wanting me to build something beefier but I feel that guns are reliable and general purpose, though ever since I read that developer's blog that said that level 1 guns were underpowered, I always do the first upgrade for them as soon as possible.
Teslas - don't see much point in them honestly for reasons others have already enumerated.
Inferno - doesn't seem to me like they do anything that a Meteor wouldn't do better
Laser - I pretty much regard this as flavor as well. I think this is supposed to be especially good vs. bosses so I feel like I have to have one or two when the bosses come calling, but I never get the impression that they're critical.
Concussion - Highly dependent on the map layout. Sometimes there's a painfully obvious spot for one of these. Usually, no.
Temporal + Cannons are my bread and butter. Temporals at every main choke point with Cannons set to take advantage.
A few Laser towers near the Temporals for bosses, and 2-3 Missile towers occasionally when it's a flyer-heavy map.
Gun towers used for pathing and routing.
Maybe 3-5 Meteor towers set to blanket the map with their extreme firing range.
I've found that lasers are a huge help against the fast boss ships, so I usually build one or two at my main choke point just because of them.
Last edited by shang; 02-16-2009 at 01:31 AM.
huh. i hadnt heard of this until now. sold. ka-ching.
I'm currently busy getting the gold medals for everything achievement and only one of my current Steam friends also seems to own DG. My leaderboards are near empty!
Anyone else here who owns this and wants to add me (or vice versa)? So that I may mock their petty scores or cry hot tears after my futile attempts to reach them.
My steam nick is Ashiran btw.
I'll add you up next time I play. Last night was an orgy of gold medals -- red guns in a yellow temporal zone = HIGH EFFICIENCY DEATH. There was one early level, level 5 or something, the one with a single linear track in a C shape with the cores in the lower right, that was a real pain to get gold on -- cracking 32,500 was very touchy for some reason. (The layout was pretty spread out.) I must have had to backspace twelve times to eke out those last few points. After that, I got gold on like four levels in a row with minimal trouble. Red guns FTW, and making aliens go in and come out of the core zone by the same pathway FTW.
We'll see how much worse it gets later, but I'm definitely in the zooooone, maaaaan :-D
Also, I'm developing an unhealthy affection for red cannons. Something about those triple barrels just gets me. Plus they seem so much more affordable than red meteor towers, and they just beat the shit out of crashers.
Last edited by RepoMan; 02-16-2009 at 08:40 AM.
I love guns, cannons, meteors, and temporals. A few meteors upgraded can go a very long way, and cover large portions of a map. Upgraded guns are underrated, but I often let other towers do the heavy lifting (depending on map).
I like cannons for boss help and upgraded they pack a serious bunch. I keep meaning to play with lasers more. Missiles if the map calls for it but they don't all call for it.
I need to go back to getting gold medals.
I'm starting to understand more about the beauty of guns/cannons. They work against fliers, fast ones, shielded ones, and ordinary ones. Upgraded guns even do well against swarms. It's hard to argue with the efficiency of weapons that are pretty much always useful.
This game is all about maximizing the equation [time within range] x [DPS of tower], summed over all towers and all combinations of aliens along the path. The temporal tower is in some sense the best bargain in the game, since it multiplies the DPS of all the guns whose ranges overlap its range.
THANK GOD for the "speed up" button. I saw the Youtube dudes who play full speed all the time, and at first I thought, "That's nuts." Now I'm practically doing it myself. ZZZZOWBRRRPBOOFBOOFSPLAT OK, that was a good wave, what's next?
It didn't take me long to fall into a rhythm of putting a Temporal Tower or two somewhere in the middle of things and just build a huge forest of Cannons. Huge range and only needing line of sight for a split second to fire makes it really easy to set up a winding corridor which leads the enemy through firing range multiple times, and I love the sound effects.
It does take a long time to set up, but once it's working it's oh so satisfying.
I find that putting a bunch of guns right next to the path, within temporal range, is more efficient than cannons. Guns are great if they're adjacent and in the slow zone. Cannons are great if they're not adjacent. You can get a red gun for half the cost of a red cannon; makes it easy to spam them in the slow zone.
Can you get gold medals with a mostly-cannon setup? How do you deal with swarms? When I went too cannon-heavy last night, big waves of swarmers + crashers would tend to let a couple of cores escape (couldn't kill all the fast swarmers in time to prevent a relay race). Red guns fixed that shit up quick, though.
(I'm fond of maybe one upgraded inferno, at the end of a straightaway as per that developer blog, just to clean up swarms in a hurry.)
I use everything but Tesla towers. Inferno and Laser towers can both be very good, but they give diminishing returns so it's best to use them sparingly. Gun towers might be a touch overpowered. I don't know why Concussion only has five votes right now. Those things do full damage against shields, you know.
Steam has this on sale for $15 (regular price is $20). I am playing the demo right now, but, being the cheap bastard that I am, I will probably wait until it's on sale for $10 before I hear the ka-ching sound myself.
I think the inherit inefficiency of the cannon (overdamage is wasted) would preclude this.
I suppose the meteor and missile have the same problem, but since they're area-effect weapons, maybe it's less severe.
I need to figure out how scoring works. One problem I am having on some of the earlier maps is that I can't quite make the gold scoring threshold. I see that "sell worth of towers" and "funds onhand" are calculated into the store. Since Towers sell for less than they're built for, obviously fewer towers = higher score. Does killing enemies more quickly increase score? I can't recall if the AI helper ever mentions that.
The other main factor in your score is the ongoing "interest" you earn on the resources you currently have. Delaying building towers until absolutely necessary will earn you more interest since your resource count will be higher, as well as preventing cores from being stolen (each one not currently in the 'nest' will reduce the interest you earn).
Good point on interest and buying towers at last second, but it's actually more score efficient to let a few cores get temporarily stolen than to buy tower(s) to prevent them from being stolen. I put together a excel spreadsheet modeling several different scenarios of cores being stolen and believe it or not, even if all 24 are stolen and returned sporadically over a period of 3 minutes, it's still better than investing $200 to buy a tower to prevent them from being stolen. Food for thought.
A good tip is to do the tower challenges where you are limited to building 10/15/20 (depending on map). This teaches you the minimalist approach. Another tidbit is a level 2 cannon is actually more efficient from a scoring perspective than a level 3 gun.
More tidbits, please!
I haven't even unlocked the command and concussion towers yet, but like others I'm thinking that infernos are useless for the price and should be replaced with meteors. Otherwise I'm still trying to find the balance between guns and cannons. Cannons do fire very slowly and are twice as expensive but they kill buggers that guns can hardly dent... hmm.
As Roger Wong posted above, I think the main consideration in the cannons vs. guns debate is the over-damage you have when using cannons. Guns are good all-rounders and can do optimal damage under almost all circumstances. Cannons are very satisfying to use against moderate sized aliens, but are very inefficient against mobs of small ones.
Sure, but cannons can also start firing much sooner than guns thanks to their longer range! At least a couple of cannons are good to have if you have some place that overlooks much of the map, I think.
Also, I just realized that there's one job that inferno towers do better than meteor towers: damage stealthed aliens. Meteors never fire on them, so they're useless here.
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