Epicycles 3

Feedback and support for the PC version of Osmos
Shredding Day
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Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:45 pm

Epicycles 3

Postby Shredding Day » Fri Sep 04, 2009 7:41 pm

Any tips for this level? I can get my mote big enough to eat one or two of the smaller attractors (and even that's difficult), but once I do it takes too much energy to travel around. My big mote is burning as many calories as it consumes.

Richard H
Posts: 16
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 9:52 pm

Re: Epicycles 3

Postby Richard H » Sat Sep 05, 2009 1:22 am

There's lots of different ways to play it but some ideas:

(Don't read this unless you are stuck. You may well find your own superior methods and much of the fun is in exploring)

1. When you are in orbit around an attractor try to use the minimum thrust possible to get motes. Use lots of fast motion and take opportunities as they arise. When they do arise don't be afraid to slow it right down to hit your target mote with minimum fuel use. After a while you get a feel for when its best to thrust with or against your motion or perpendicular to it to achieve a rendezvous but experiment with all of these.

2. Make sure you get the most significant motes around an attractor before consuming the attractor since they will tend to scatter once you do.

3. You will need to leave orbit of several attractors to mine the motes around others before you are big enough to consume attractors. When you do the most fuel efficient way to do this would appear to be to thrust with your direction of motion and spiral out (maybe just a quarter/half turn or so depending on where you are in the gravity well) from the current attractor. Sometimes I'll aim to throw myself into a slow orbit right near the boundary going clockwise to rendezvous with the next attractor in which case you need to be ready to slow yourself and dip in a little just as you get there so you are captured in an anti-clockwise orbit around the next attractor. Remember gravity will never be stronger than when you are near the attractor so this is the time to apply thrust to be captured by it. If you are too slow you will shoot out the back and have to use lots of thrust to catch up. Other times I'll thrust out in front of the current attractor and swing into a lower faster anti-clockwise orbit to catch up with the next attractor before thrusting back out to meet it. In all cases when leaving orbit I thrust with my direction of motion (ie perpendicular to the vector joining me with the local attractor) and start thrusting early so that by the time you break orbit you have your desired heading.

4. Try to use the attractor's gravity to get you going generally where you want to go before you consume it. Or at least don't approach it directly from the inside and have it sling you towards the border just before you eat it.

5. There's enough extra mass in this level for you to get big enough to consume the central attractor without consuming all of the others. Once you do the others will hit the boundary and you will complete the level. Though you can also eat all the outer attractors first.

6. All this said, there is room to make mistakes. I've got point 4 completely wrong and eaten stuff in the wrong order (the more you eat the more you waste in thrusting a greater mass around) and still managed to get by.

I guess just generally try to work with gravity and thrust as little as possible. When I talk about thrust above, even when leaving orbit, its generally just a succession of rapid taps, take my bearings, a few more taps to correct etc. Get into a good orbit and then use fast motion to see what you sweep up or what you should go for. And sometimes if you miss your opportunity be prepared to let a mote go until the next close approach. The worst thing you can do is waste a whole heap of fuel chasing something down only to also find that you have also flung yourself out of orbit prematurely.

Ummm, that's about it for the brain dump. I'd be interested to hear what other people do. I've got up to epicycles forever 4 and I still feel like I'm not doing it quite right :)
Last edited by Richard H on Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Shredding Day
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Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 10:45 pm

Re: Epicycles 3

Postby Shredding Day » Sun Sep 06, 2009 2:27 pm

I finally beat it. Three thumb rules were key to beating this level:

1) It seems that the smaller orbital motes all over the level slowly merge with each other over time. Rushing through the level aggressively makes it easier to find small prey.

2) Once the player mote has eaten most of the orbital motes around two different attractors, the threat of motes merging together and being unable to find prey anywhere in the level disappears. At this point it's better to play slowly and carefully.

3) Thanks to Richard H for this bit -- Don't bother trying to eat every attractor. Get big enough to chow down on the central attractor and the level is beaten.


Maybe I'll come back to this level and try it the hard way some day. With all that said and done, I have to confess that Zen Attractors 3 was much more frustrating than this level and probably needs some toning down.

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jeffplum
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Re: Epicycles 3

Postby jeffplum » Mon Sep 07, 2009 3:04 pm

@Richard: No, I'm afraid not. I think they just hang there forever. :D

osmos235442421
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Sep 22, 2009 5:19 pm

Re: Epicycles 3

Postby osmos235442421 » Mon Jan 18, 2010 7:43 pm

I made a video guide, folks on the steam forum were having a tough time with this level.

http://www.wegame.com/watch/osmos-epicycles-3/

renoor
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Joined: Fri Jan 22, 2010 1:24 am

Re: Epicycles 3

Postby renoor » Fri Jan 22, 2010 2:16 am

Hey I just want to adda my bit:
Try to switch the attractors by accelerating towards the central attractor when you pass just by the farthest point of your orbit. You should use just up to 10 short clicks to get on a path VERY close to the central attractor, but not hitting it. When you survive (not get absorbed by big motes in the central area), you will end up heading just towards the outer attractor. Don't be afraid of the red path color, correct your path during the closest approach to the central attractor, so the predicted path curves in the direction of the orbit (most of the times you have to slow down 1-2 clicks, but still maintain red hyperbolic path). You can do the small corrections when closing to the target attractor. The last task is to slow down from the hyperbolic orbit around the target attractor to circular/elliptical orbit. Do this (again) during/just before the closest approach to the target attractor. It's crucial to change orbits during the closest approach (we're using the Oberth effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect), but it also needs the most precise timing. I'm perfecting this method a few weeks now and still I'm not as good as I want to be. But it's SOOO satisfying when you do it right and you can switch attractors and don't even notice that you are shrinking...it's like free fuel :)
When absorbing the outer attractors, don't head towards them, but try to
a) get ahead of them, so they pull you back a little just before you absorb them. you should end up moving slowly, definitely not towards the outer edge and you can correct your path with little fuel, maybe wait for the next attractor in the way and get a direct hit
b) get to very elliptical orbit around the outer attractor, wait until the pericenter of your orbit (the point of closest approach to the attractor) is in the direction of the attractor orbit, then wait until you get to the apocenter (the farthest point of your orbit), slow down and you should be on a blue path towards the attractor, absorb it and you're instantly on a very good path around the central attractor.

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Meal Worms
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Re: Epicycles 3

Postby Meal Worms » Wed Feb 03, 2010 5:01 am

Hey all,

Just wanted to make sure you saw this blog post which should be of particular use for folks having trouble with F3A-3 or F3C-3.

Dave


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