New Boss: Iwanawin's "Raptor"

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Hey everyone!

Thanks to IWannaWin’s contribution, the newest boss ‘Raptor’ is up, and uses strategies only possible in S3. It’s defensive strategy uses large numbers of slow scramblers to defend itself, while it slowly saves up for large ping rushes. The tracks along its sides allow it to stagger out its units, and opening holes in them allows for some dynamic attacks. It may even have a few more tricks up its sleeve!

If anyone is interested in contributing a boss, feel free to message me with the algo ID and the name you would like to see on the dropdown.

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Yep, Raptor is a realy strong algo!
It is imposible (at least for me) to counter it with “standard” strategy,
with out making specific adjustments, for the scramblers, cannons and specific layout.

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Nice, I had fun making that algo.
Let me know how you did against it by hand:

  • Defeated in 1 try
  • Defeated in 2 tries
  • Defeated in 3 tries
  • More

0 voters

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I got it on the first try… barely. I restructured everything and now destructors are randomly being replaced with encryptors. I was able to get it into a stalemate pattern of play and eventually get some EMPs through the clean house. Got me down to 6 HP before it stalemated.

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First try as well, but it would be much harder for me, if I didn’t see it so many times against my algo :slight_smile:

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First try too. But I know what it does … and had Defence + Offence plan in mind… that actually turned out prity strong!
Soon in the lobby: RaptorBane

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Hmm yes, by hand you do have a bit of an advantage, since you can see what it is „planning“ by the removals but still, well done defeating it first try everyone xD

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First try, this setup with EMPs got them stuck rebuilding and defending every turn with no resources. Had to add a bit of room to delay them so they would miss the scramblers

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Closed out the game with this monstrosity:

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Looks like if you cut off their resources ASAP its hard for them to stabilize and get back in the game

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Not sure how many tries, since I don’t hard code my strategy I end up doing a lot of tweaking parameters to see what is successful on aggregate. Eventually I just find some values that seem to work well and those tend to win more then they lose, etc. Nice algo though (Raptor), definitely makes good use of the new changes.

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Yes it has a clear weakness, if you send emps down it’s arms, it has trouble coming back, future versions might have a defence against this :grinning:

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Thanks, that was my aim

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Haha, it took me two tries myself ( I tried to play a bit more like aelgoo though, not like a human) well I will be gone for quite some time now, see you at the end of season 3 then!

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Another thing you could patch -
I beat raptor by constantly sending 3 scramblers from position 4,9 while my field was empty. The scramblers completely blocked all the damage while not taking a hit from any of Raptors defensive units.
I stopped all the attacks until i had enough cores and bits to close out the game with massively encrypted ping cannons.
I’m guessing Raptor likes sending units from position 16,25 (or 11,2 when playing as raptor) when the enemy doesn’t have anything…?
Side switching would help a lot here. or placing destructors to destroy the scramblers, but tried it and not too effective… you need a few destructors and enemy could counter with placing filters at pos 5,10 6,9 7,8 and 7,7 while sending scramblers from 6,7
but anyway, nice algo.