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My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game page: Doesn't exist yet.

Janis 'Pendrokar' Lukss's run

Verifier Responses

Quote:
I'm just going to give you my review, so you've got something to compare with other reviewers.

I've played all the Mechwarrior games in the series, but never finished Mechwarrior 3 "Pirate's Moon" expansion.

Mech hit-boxes work different in the Mechwarrior 4 series, than every other game. Shooting for the ankles and the nuts are the weakest points on a mech. Crotch-shots are the new leg-shots. Head shots are impossible to make on a consistent basis (there's a huge random multiplier involved), and ankle shots are just outright difficult.

Salvage has several contraints, and a small random factor. You might be allowed 80 tons of mech salvage, maximum 2 mechs, no more than 100 tons. So if there are only 2 mechs left that are "salvagable", and one is 60 tons and the other is 70 tons, you won't be allowed to take both of them. Weapons are almost completely immune, and you just take whatever hasn't been blown to hell. So, getting decent mechs is a significant portion of the strategy, and you only get those by balancing the gameplay to get them (blowing the shit out of stuff you don't want, lightly damaging stuff you do want).

Lastly, this game is kind of strange to "speed run" because it differs so greatly from other games. You're driving a vehicle, and you've got to outfit that vehicle.  The in-between mission stuff is no different than Splinter Cell when you're choosing your loadout, or Jedi Knight: Academy when you're choosing your force powers and weapons. It is an integral part of the game because you could spend 30 minutes tweaking mechs for each mission, and reduce the in-mission time by 50%. A mission that might take 6 minutes with default mechs may very well take 4 minutes with customized mechs. You could run around and do a bunch of other missions to get your wingmens' skills trained up (shooting and piloting), then do the mission with significantly more capable wingmen. Any speedrun that is only the in-mission video would be subject to a whole other level of scrutiny, some of which just isn't possible with any precision.




segment 1-
The runner shows the options screen to show that he's not using the in-game "cheats", as well as just giving some kind of reference point between segments. Heads to Eaton, of which, at least 3 missions must be completed for the game to advance. Tosses two worthless wingmen, and picks up a couple of decent ones. Uses completely stock mech configurations to avoid the extra time necessary for custom config. Eliminates foes about as fast as possible. The runner uses jumpjets to get the missile lock-on at far range, attempts to run over any that are nearby while shooting at further ones. Sends a couple wingmen to nav-b, where they'll engage the tanks and choppers as soon as the initial tanks are done.

There's just not much room to improve the time for this mission. Wingmen are next to worthless, but significantly better with medium and light mechs than with heavier mechs. It wouldn't have saved any time if all three wingmen were sent to nav-b, instead of keeping one for nav-a.

Purchases two more decent wingmen. There are really horrible wingmen, and there are decent wingmen. There are no good ones to purchase, since they all get trained during missions.



segment 2-
Runner loads up the two wingmen hired in the last segment and puts them into target mechs. That is all they're going to be good for, just an extra target for the enemy to shoot. That's as good as it can get.

Demolishers have quite a bit of armor, so they're tough to crack at this level. The runner throws in LRM's. The only things he could have done better would be to turn off his active radar and remove the BAP, but the improvement would be insignificant, and might result in his wingmen taking more fire. Which would result in less money after the mission due to repairs. So, the mission is going as well as possible at first contact.

The runner should have been more focused on distant targets, and running over the light ground vehicles since he has absolutely no leg damage. There might be 10 seconds shaved off of maneuvering and waiting for weapons to recharge.

The runner goes after the choppers instead of the mech, because wingmen are *utterly* worthless when confronted by both helis and mechs. They'll do much better when it's just the mechs, so going after the choppers was the correct move to make, immediately following the ground vehicles.

First shot against the chimera should have been a crotch shot. The shot was there and the runner pulled high.  Good maneuvering and keeping weapons active.
The mission could have started better, but it went well after runner began focusing on the mechs. Lots of friendly helicopters and wingmen running around kept the total time within expectation.

The runner sells mechs and weapons to get money, and to save money on the system transfer. Customizes a mech, taking off the SRM's which won't be helpful for awhile.
Salvage argus and chimera, and a bunch of weapons.



segment 3-
Runner uses all stock configs for his wingmen, and his own custom mech.

Runner turns off his radar, which is smart. LBXAC's do more damage as you get closer. They do their rated damage at their maximum range, but get a 50% boost at point-blank range. However, there's no chance of running out of ammo, so the runner just keeps shooting with everything.  Just the right number of heatsinks. The runner runs (heh) over the LRM carriers, while shooting at the armored targets, which is exactly what should be done. Makes one hell of a pass through them, then moves onto the targets buildings while the wingmen clean up what is left of the ground units.

The runner brushes against the buldings, which does only a little damage to armor, but serves two purposes. Enemy fire directed at the runner will, in many cases, strike the building. The runner also does a tiny bit of constant damage to the building. It doesn't look pretty, but it's the thing to do.

The building rubble is completely transparent, unless rubble was coded into the level and the building was just enclosing the rubble (which happens). On this mission, all the buildings are empty, so you can just run and shoot through them -- the enemy does, too.

The runner completely fucks up at the end, selling a catapult, then buying the thing right back, wasting almost $2million. However, money is not critical at any point after this, so I don't consider it a disqualifier.



segment 4-
This is a tough mission because of all the units clustered in a small area, with light and medium mechs running about to distract friendly AI. On top of that, heatsinks are reduced to something like 80% efficiency. I think the runner might have done better to give the catapult mech to a different wingman -- mustang is notoriously aggressive, geting her ass shot out all the time on harder levels because she charges right the fuck into things. Mags is even better, but she's untrained. And I think loading the catapult with CSRM's ("guided" short range missiles) would have been the way to go, because by the time the wingmen get to nav-b, all the combat is close quarters. The LBX could have been traded for a UAC, too. I think the loadout could stand to be optimized.

At the start of nav-b, while the runner is perched and stationary, he should have been going for crotch shots. On the easy difficultly level, they're easy to make at that exact place and time. That first argus should have been taken out in the first two salvos, because the torso was already flashing red (under 25% armor left).  There's 30 seconds, right there, combined with friendlies continuing to shoot at it instead of others.

The runner drops down to run over the tanks when they approach. At this point, he should have put his wingmen onto the nearest light or medium mech. Half the problem with this mission is the wingmen AI, and taking out all the little maneuverable targets frees up your AI for the heavy mechs -- against whom your wingmen do best.

Once you're running around in the actual pass at nav-b, the best you can do is quick commands to lock all your wingmen onto a target. It's just too much to do, too many keys to press. So when you're perched up on the cliff, you've got to get one of the light mechs targeted and assigned to your wingmen while you shoot at whatever you can. The runner should have gotten those light mechs (the two wolfhounds and bushwacker are the problem) knocked out by converging all 7 wingmen against the light and medium mechs, so they don't waste so much time running around trying to get a bearing on those fast, maneuverable mechs.

There is some improvement to be made on this mission, and I think there's 45 seconds that could be knocked off it. I think the setup is good, it's just micromanaging your wingmen (who are worthless when not all locked onto the same target) and heat.




segment 5-
Again, the runner fucks up when he sells the black knight, then turns right back around and buys it. If he was going to cut travel costs, he should have sold all the mechs -- mechs are only added to the market, never removed unless you get one destroyed during a mission. So, without question, that is the same mistake again. But I mean, fuck. He's never really hurting for cash, and there's other mechs he sells along with it, which is proper procedure. It is just a technical flub, and on a harder difficultly, would likely break the run due to money contraints. It costs the time to click on the mech to sell it, and that's it.

The runner skips time by travelling back and forth. The first Styk mission is required, and shows up a set time after the first three missions have been done (either Eaton or Halloran). The runner's choice of Awesome with 2 PPC's is queer (well above and beyond just being "strange"), but it seems to work for him. I mean, that is fucking weird.

You have to shoot maybe 2 tanks, and then they all turn their fire on you. You'd have to work to fail that portion of the mission, because just running foward allows it to be completed. So nothing noteworthy up to hammer lance (the first group of mechs).

Saving Hammer lance isn't required. However, the second wave doesn't spawn until hammer has been killed or all enemies have been killed -- one group has to be destroyed. On the easy difficulty, hammer lance can last 4 or more minutes. On the hardest difficultly, you've got about 20 seconds to start shooting helicopters, and about 60 total seconds after mission start to get over there before they're annhilated by the mechs. So, because the runner shoots over there and saves them, moving the mission along to the next wave. There's not much speedup to be done on that portion, unless the runner switched to the hardest difficultly for that one mission. However, THAT would require custom wingman mechs to be able to defeat the second wave. So, with all issues considered, the runner did a good job up through nav-a and hammer lance.

Knocking out the helicopters on the way is half the battle. Runner shoots well on the way over there. He stops while still shooting at the thantos, when he should have kept moving to dissipate heat faster. Heat drops faster the faster you're traveling (air moving over the heatsinks). Previous games, you could stop, but this one you've got to keep moving as fast as possible.

The runner orders everyone to engage nearest target. Between the mechs and the watercraft, that's not a bad call.


segment6-
Runner skips time to Wernke.

This can be a rough mission. Runner goes straight for the mobile power units, which is what the hell you do on this mission. He could have run over a few more vehicles on the way, but not bad. After the drop ship, the demolisher really beats the hell out of him with the UAC20. This was a close one -- he just about lost his ass on this attempt, and it was that demolisher that did it.
I don't know what else to say on this segment. It's pretty chaotic, by design, and can't really be done much faster -- just better. He turns his back on enemies a couple times, which is a major no-no.


segment 7-
The focus on speed is evident in mech choices. The runner chose heavy and medium mechs -- no assault mechs. Heavies and mediums will get over to the fight faster, even if they don't fare as well on armor. In actual gameplay, people use assaults with a couple heavies.

Runner heads for nav-b instead of nav-a, which is good. He should have locked his wingmen on a different mech than he was shooting. That's the only real weakness in the runner's style -- you never shoot at your current target, you just keep it designated for your wingmen. However, he does run around firing on lots of different targets to get the enemies to shoot at him, freeing up his wingmen to work properly. He exposes his back several times during the fight, but doesn't fare as badly in this one as the last one. The runner focuses on the heavy mechs, which is the mission priority.

This segment can only be sped up by superior firepower and/or superior shooting. Better firepower would take mech customization of heavies, because using default assault loadouts would slow down wingmen and they miss like hell at long-range moving targets. For wingmen, you really want medium and heavy mechs so they're over there in the 300m range when the shooting starts. And going through to customize mechs would each up, at the minimum, 30 seconds per mech.

So, everything seems balanced out pretty well for this mission. Crotch-shots aren't nearly as important with PPCs, since PPC torso shots completely screw up mech computers and targeting.



segment 8-
Runner gets his mechs and wingmen mixed up at the start.

This mission isn't a whole lot different than the last mission, except that you need some speed to get back over to nav-b after the initial fight. The default daishi is slow as hell, but the others are decent. And you can get seriously fucked up if you run headfirst into the enemy mech formations.

The runner mostly runs perpendicular to the enemy, keeping his torso turned to fire. The strategy works, and he doesn't take a lot of damage during the fight. I don't know what he's doing at 4:55, and it kind of looks like he doesn't either. There's some wasted time in there. At 5:32, the runner should have been shooting at either the cockpit or nuts -- he was stationary and firing at an approaching enemy. There's some better shootin' to do there, tex.
There's some improvement to be made on this mission. I'm not certain how much time there is to be saved.
Really good salvage.



segment 9-
Not too bad for mech choices on this segment. I think he should have bumped up his speed and dropped his jumpjets, but you still have to wait for complete mopup of all enemies, and that just isn't possible until all the friendly mechs get there.

This is a difficult mission because the Prince has to stay alive, and that bastard charges right out into the middle of everything once you (or your wingmen) hit the trigger box on the ridge.

The route is very strange. Turning off his radar is the key element to it, otherwise he'd be inundated by foes. The runner's route is actually a good route in normal gameplay. He's right on the verge of breaking the mission boundary. There's a whole bunch of enemy mechs that don't get activated before taking out the dropship.
The runner keeps telling his wingmen to engage closest target, keeping them on the attack, finishing the objectives. Those medium lasers should have been swapped out for a large laser, and the runner should have held back outside of the dropship's weapon range. The runner just about lost it on this attempt.
I think the mark-2 should have been customized. The jumpjets and medium lasers dropped for a large laser and heatsinks. That could have been done in 15 seconds or less, and I'm pretty sure that it would have saved 15 seconds or more.



segment 10-
This can be a difficult mission because the AI is just worthless. I think the runner should have gone with faster mechs -- namely the two gladiators he sold, two missions ago. The mark-2 isn't bad for this mission, because the medium lasers do decent damage. However, the snow adds ten heatsinks and doubles total effectiveness. This mission, and the last one, would have benefitted from either a large pulse laser or ER large laser.

At 2:10, the runner should have been shooting for the crotch or the cockpit. He finally gets a cockpit shot. He should have already ordered his wingmen to beta to get them over there while he was doing long-range shooting at the sunders. He really should have dropped those jumpjets for speed.




segment 11-

Last one. That's one hell of a choice, a medium cougar with a large pulse and almost no heatsinks.
Runner gets a crazy boost from the side of the crater at 2:30, which is really only noticable with the light and fast mechs.

Already overheating at 3:00. 
There's an area trigger just after the airbase, that when you traverse, it triggers the large group of longbows to activate. They stay shutdown until you shoot someone in the group, or you cross the trigger. The runner uses jumpjets to bypass the trigger, allowing him to trigger those mechs with laser shots. This gives the prince a large advantage since the enemy will stay locked onto the runner's mech.

Close call at 4:35 with all the missile floating into the runner's backside. Excellent use of cover. He really should be doing crotch shots at that point. He finally starts doing them at 6:00. The prince still has two wingmen, which is about average for a normal game.
At 7:20, the runner circles around to cut off the daishi, keeping the other three heavy mechs locked onto the approaching mechs. That could have gone badly had that mech spent a significant amount of time over there.

The runner is attempting crotch shots while perched.
That's about as good as this mission can get. It might have been possible to some armor for an extra heatsink, but since the majority of damage is done by other mechs, I'm don't think it would save any significant amount of time.


I think there's a couple minutes to be saved by better gameplay, and maybe a minute or two on segment 9 and 10 by mech customization. I think the routes are solid, but there's micromanagement that could help.

I don't think any kind of trainer or cheating method was used. There was plenty of heat and almost everything was stock configs. The only[/b] thing possible would have been some kind of damage reduction trainer or hex-edit, and that simply is not evident.


Total time 1:07:30, cutting out the loading screens.


Quote:
It's segmented, no deaths.

Mad skills on the last level.


I then bugged this verifier to elaborate, he then said this.

Quote:
Oh, yes, right. Well, let me start by saying that the quality of game play was very good. The audio was fine as well, however the video seemed jumpy, like a framerate problem or something. I ended up trying to time his PPC recharge times to figure out if he had speed up the video by removing frames, and the timing seemed to be good so I left it at the conclusion his graphics card+whatever program he used to capture the video with+mechwarrior mercenaries=graphics performance hit. I don't think the quality reduction is enough to warrant him needing to recapture it, however, because it never gets to a point that is any worse than somewhat annoying. As far as cheating goes, everything looked fine, and he wasn't using the mekpaks, which is a good thing I guess. The only thing he even did in the whole run that I don't know how he did it was buy and sell items so fast, but I'm sure he used a keyboard shortcut I just am not aware of.


Also, when I say the last level had mad skills, what I mean was the whole run was fantastic, but the last level REALLY shines because if I'm not mistaken he brings a medium mech to a fight where if your not careful, you can get an assault mech that has 3 or 4 times the hp dropped in under 10 seconds, which essentially means he could get killed by a random fluke shot that wasn't even aimed at him,  AND THEN he makes it worse by using building that he has to destroy for cover, blowing them up at point blank which causes an explosion that further damages him, and running to the next one without getting hit! I just tremble at the thought of how many tries it had to take to get it right.


Quote:
The run appears to be a segmented run. Getting more info would surely be helpful, though.

The audio and video quality are excellent, and there are no sync problems. Also, there was no noticeable cheating. There was complete consistency between saves from what I could see.

Its a good run. Mostly its just precise aiming and good routes on the runner's part. There aren't a lot of tricks in this one.

You asked if there were deaths, and there were none. The runner allowed his mech to overheat periodically, but it was always at the final seconds of the map and cut seconds from the total time.


Decision: Accept

Reason: The latter two verifiers didn't have any complaints and they said the run was very optimized. The first verifier noted some possible improvements, but he still accepted the run.
Thread title:  
Shocked Shocked Shocked
Holy!!!
The first verifier knew a LOT more about the game than I did doing the run. I should have made a thread about this run. BTW I didn't fuck up with mech buying/selling the purpose was to have them equipped without doing it manually in the mech lab. With all the improvements the verifier noted needed much working in the mech lab so I doubt it would be worth to shorten time in battles!
(user is banned)
Question: Can this run be done on the MekTek version released for free?
Not a walrus
Probably not. Source ports are usually not accepted unless they can produce demo files that play back in the original.
(user is banned)
So I have to find a copy of the original? Dandy.

I can re run the same route and beat his time, especially due to the way its segmented.

Source: 19 of 20 years of being alive spent on mecha and multiple ToP's.
Not a walrus
I might have misunderstood your question. Is MekTek just a freeware version of the original, or is it a source port in the vein of, say, Chocolate Doom?
Lord Of The Beards
The MekTek version was just a free official rerelease of the original game.  Also it should be said that you you can cut out a few missions from the route because some of the missions he did are not mandatory and he only did them for money to get bigger mechs.  Also check out this thread https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/redoing_mechwarrior_4_mercenaries_target_sub_40_min._17.html as he gives the better route anyway and has two glitches listed that could be useful.
Not a walrus
If it's just a free re-release, that should be fine, then.
(user is banned)
I shall start my work within a few days with planning.

Thank you for your quick replies!
(user is banned)
Well, fuck, it's a new game. It's patched with new content. It has the mechs from the 'mech packs' for the clan and inner sphere. Same game, same amount of mechs, just different positions. My research has concluded I should be able to sub 45 this with a single segment.