Author Topic: Speedrunning Outpost 2  (Read 5334 times)

Offline Crow!

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Speedrunning Outpost 2
« on: July 10, 2018, 11:05:26 PM »
I've been speedrunning the Plymouth Hard mode campaign for about a week now.  It has been a lot of fun figuring out as much as I can about how the missions work and how to get around the challenges it posed.

Here's a link to my current fastest run (2:14:28) https://www.twitch.tv/videos/283245911

I make rather extensive use of structure kit cloning and starship part duplication.  I actually found that cloning structure kits takes a prohibitively large amount of command time to perform; I usually didn't use it for extra resources (except for mission 2), but instead it became important when my structure factory or convec was too busy to afford waiting to make another copy of the structure in question.  Missions 8 and 11 use starship part cloning as a major portion of their income generation.  Mission 8 in particular circumvents dealing with Vortex RNG by just not venturing to the middle of the map for rare ore.

In case anyone else feels like giving Outpost 2 speedrunning a try, I'm uploading the notes I made while developing my run here.  This is a strategy game, so I'm sure other people would come up with different ideas than me, but at least this will give a starting point.
Speedruns, my FFIV game randomizer, and more can be found at my twitch page:
https://twitch.tv/iicrowii

Offline Hooman

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Re: Speedrunning Outpost 2
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2018, 07:39:51 AM »
That's quite the detailed doc. It could make for a reasonable strategy guide.

Of course you realize, seeing structure kit cloning bug exploited in a speedrun makes me want to patch it that much more.  :P

I'm curious if you've done a speedrun through the game without exploiting that bug, and how long it took. I'm also curious how the starship part duplication works. It sounds different from the kit duplication bug, since there is no deploy.

Offline robbis_1

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Re: Speedrunning Outpost 2
« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2018, 02:54:12 AM »
I enjoyed watching this! Thanks!

Offline Crow!

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Re: Speedrunning Outpost 2
« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2018, 07:59:13 PM »
After a lot of failed attempts, I have improved my time to my goal of faster than 2 hours: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/289233528
This run in particular had an unexpected quake hit the cargo truck line in mission 3, which caused me to have some extra research time and extra population in mission 5.  The net effect wasn't nearly as big of a time loss as losing 3 trucks should have been.  It also featured a fairly early, unexpected failure in mission 6, costing a few minutes.

This game has so many little things that can go wrong to ruin everything.  Some of my strategies are probably overkill because they're designed to avoid some of those possible disasters.  Going faster than this probably involves dropping some of that safety as well as playing better overall.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2018, 08:04:08 PM by Crow! »
Speedruns, my FFIV game randomizer, and more can be found at my twitch page:
https://twitch.tv/iicrowii

Offline Hooman

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Re: Speedrunning Outpost 2
« Reply #4 on: July 26, 2018, 04:35:08 AM »
Avoiding disaster sounds like a legitimate strategy. I think I would find simply getting lucky to be relatively uninteresting.

I'm guessing you enjoy the Plymouth campaign more. Or is it simply easier to focus on that one right now?

Offline Crow!

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Re: Speedrunning Outpost 2
« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2018, 09:07:09 AM »
I never liked Eden.  Every time the game has something interesting, it's Plymouth that gets the cool thing and Eden that gets the boring thing.  The campaign is especially frustrating because, militarily, you have literally only lasers and railguns until mission 8.

I did take a peek at the Eden campaign, and it looks like there would be much more of an emphasis on glitches in the early missions.  The land rush mission has even the agridome in a convec at the start, and mining in mission 3 sucks to the point where I'm pretty sure cloning and recycling CCs is the way to go.


Regarding the glitches, you could certainly do a "glitchless" speedrun; some players are into that sort of thing.  It's really hard to estimate how much time gets saved by the glitches, though - it's huge in mission 2, but then in later missions, a slower clear means more population and research for future missions which speed those later missions up for some portion of the time you had lost.  I suspect that Tokamak Bombs are still the best way to handle defense in missions 5 and 11 even without glitches, it just would take more resources to keep up.  In the later missions, starship part duplication can be swapped with mining from an actual mine; in mission 8, I'm mainly doing the glitches just to avoid the risk of my convoy setting up the 3 bar rare mine in the mountain getting killed by a quake or a vortex along the way; I think the two strategies finish at about the same time overall.

I made a video for the starship part duplication a while ago, but didn't link it here yet.  Here it is:

I happened to remember it from my childhood; people talked about it on WON back when that was a thing.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2018, 09:17:54 AM by Crow! »
Speedruns, my FFIV game randomizer, and more can be found at my twitch page:
https://twitch.tv/iicrowii

Offline Hooman

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Re: Speedrunning Outpost 2
« Reply #6 on: August 05, 2018, 01:41:05 AM »
Ok, that was a really cool demo.

Yet more code for me to look into  :P