Overview
This is an advanced guide for optimizing tricks and achieving low budget, non breaking solutions FOR CONVOYS.
Intro
Yup, another guide to cover the DLC… like for the other one, these are optimization examples, not meant to be copied as first-time solutions, because some of these are very very VERY precise, copying them with even a tiny difference could make the whole thing not work in some cases…
Also, as usual these are all solutions for
which is kind of important, because sure, you can optimize further with breakable roads, but that’s kinda cheating, isn’t it?
j/k =P
Of course, there are some floating/falling/hanging pieces and some planks that do break or get destroyed, but it’s only for cubes and pellets… if a car drives on it, it has to hold (with the exception of level 29 in which you’re forced to build a breakable ramp).
Levels 3-10
Let’s start with level 3, the first two are basically tutorials, not worth going into:
Not much to say here, just make sure the ramp is sturdy enough to take the weight of the cars…
Here the only trick is to launch the cars as near to the wall as possible so the weight of the fall is not absorbed by the planks directly… then it’s just a matter of building a simple bridge.
This is the best score possible, since $700 is the cost for the smallest piece of plank/road, and you need one to re-direct the pellet… By the by, the trick in this one is to get the pellet to the switch as fast as possible, hence the portal right above the pellet launcher… otherwise you need to slow the cars down at some point with a bump.
Same as previous level… you need one tiny piece of road to push the cube, so $700 is the minimum.
That’s a two-fer… =P
Or you can use the cube I left untouched to destroy the other turret, doesn’t matter really…
Levels 11-20
Ahhh this one… well, you need a lot of gravity/motion stuff to push cubes along… seems this DLC was designed thinking about these type of “hacks” =P
I zoomed in in this video so you can see how it works…
I do believe this is the lowest score possible, since it’s the smallest possible ramp (that’s stable enough for what comes next at least) but who knows, maybe not… also, I’m pretty sure I did this the wrong way, but eh… it works… reverse and all xD
The whole trick in this level is choosing a correct path for the cars… I found this was the cheapest/easiest…
Yeaaaaah… I forgot to optimize 15… =/
Also, I hate that level, it’s janky as ♥♥♥♥, probably the worst designed level in the game… I might not even bother, there’s plenty of neat solutions out there, I’m probably not gonna do a good score without copying them, and that’s kinda lame… we’ll see though.
EDIT: So, just ’cause I hate leaving holes, here’s a solution based on someone else’s idea for the blue & red portals’ placement… thing is, this stupid level… ugh so jank!!! I really tried other ways, but it’s super ♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard to keep a steady momentum for all the cars… even in this solution, where I’m making sure they all do (as much as I could), you’ll still see the last car behave differently for no good reason other than “just because”… so yeah, no patience for this badly designed level… I’m just posting this because it might be one of the few, maybe even the only way to keep a decent momentum, at least for those first two buttons… It can obviously be optimized further, but screw that… anyways, rant over… xD
Like 14, here’s it’s all a matter of choosing the right path… to simplify my life, I had the cube hit the middle button before getting to its rightful place… it really makes a difference in not having to over-complicate everything, as you can entirely bypass the annoying open/closed buttons in the bottom right corner.
This almost doesn’t work because of timing… I’m sure it can be optimized further in terms of the bridge, but you need to slow the 1st car down enough for the pellet to reach the switch, which is where things get complicated…
So yeah, about this level, full disclosure: Originally, my optimized solution used a very small bump to stop the cars from going into the acid… BUT I did see a zero solution, and the thing is, there aren’t a billion ways of solving this level with $0… there’s like maybe a couple of ways (with a couple of variants)…
So instead of flat-out copying someone else’s solution or using the non-zero one I did, I tried to find a different way solving this with $0, and I did find a way, however it does rely on portal glitches, which is something I usually avoid (because d’uh, they’re glitches)… but on this one occasion I’ll use it, if only to showcase one of the very few ways to solve this without spending anything… the other way is a lot more simple, tbh, because for this one you need to place all the portals pixel perfect as to fit them all and make them glitch correctly… =/
Yeah, so this one can probably be optimized a bit more, but I needed those two pieces of plank to get that precise bounce for the cube to take out both turrets and have it slide just enough to fall into the red portal…
Simple and efficient, can probably be opitmized a lot further.
Levels 21-30
This score might be close to the minimum, I’m not sure you can reduce it further by much without missing the jump.
“With a little help from my friends”… This one I’m sure can be further optimized by quite a bit, but I’m fine with that design.
I’m pretty sure I did this the wrong way, but oh well… =P Doing it the right way might be more optimizable…
Not the cheapest solution, but I do love how they bounce to the exit… so I’m good.
Again, this is the minimum possible, since you need to push the cube. The trick in this one is to place the vertical portals in the correct order so cars don’t collide with each other, other than that it’s straightforward enough.
I’ve seen a cheaper solution which might be the cheapest, but this was my attempt at it, I kinda left it there ’cause it’s a great example of using “motion stopping” planks… three of them in the same level, it’s probably my record… =P
I’ve also seen cheaper, so it’s definitely possible… I do like how my floating plank hits the pellet to redirect it twice… totally accidental, but hey, neat =)
Oh also worth noting that a single vertical plank can be actually used to redirect stuff in 90 degrees, which can help throughout the main game too (I could probably revisit my other highscores, but won’t =P)
I know the minimum possible score in here is $1900, which is what you need for the initial rope and road to drop down the cars… but I ran out of patience figuring out a way to beat it with only portals… @StoneWall has a very cool design (he probably has the best scores in all maps too if you wanna check his).
Hey, at least this could be the cheapest “peaceful mode”… =P
I don’t like this level either, because I don’t like being forced to build stuff that HAS TO break. I know this can also be optimized further, but I really didn’t care for this level, so I’ll leave it at that… plus the bottom bridge is too much of a pain in the ass to optimize…
Well the bounce before the last portal was totally accidental, but it turns out it was also VERY necessary, since the whole trick in this map is both getting enough acceleration to make it to the exit AND stall long enough so the top right pellet has enough time to hit the switch… that’s why the last bounce was essential.
Anyways, I’m sure there’s a more elegant way of solving this, but eh… it works and it’s $0, so yeah, good enough xD
Conclusion
Well there you go… I’m sure a lot of these aren’t the best possible scores (except for the zeros and bare minimums that I pointed out)… @StoneWall and other players have a lot of better scores, although I’m not sure their solutions are non-breaking (they might be)… which to me is an important parameter even if this game doesn’t penalize you for going over a 100% stress (or breaking designs, basically) like most other bridge builder games.
I hope they at least give you some ideas on how to optimize these maps… okay… so I’m done with this unless they release another DLC. Toodles!
**Edit: Videos uploaded! =)