Got through my Sunday by completing a stage 7 Dr T Volcano Island on both accounts. I did lose 1 tank on my secondary account but it occurred at the last stage which is my final attack of the day usually, meaning it would have little overall impact.
Usually, I find Volcano Island the easier of the two Dr T events for my load out of Tanks, Bombardiers and Medics using Capt Everspark for my Hero. The reasoning is that the defenses are a little more spread out and not beached, especially Boom Cannons, which can be thicker on Tropical Island days and thus harder to get through. Here, I can generally place my troops out of harms way and slowly build up my GBE to nail the rest of the Boom Cannons and Shock Launchers, which is this load out’s biggest enemies.
I did get my first max level Boom Cannon naturally completed today on my secondary account. That felt really great placing it right in front. I doubt that will have much impact in terms of the barbarians at the gates, but it might give lower level opponents something to think about when they attempt to BART down my defenses.
After cleaning up and doing my daily operation, I found myself being able to upgrade both Rocket Launchers on both accounts. Since one is a low level, I should be able to do another upgrade in a few hours. In addition, I started a Pvt Bullit for my main account while my secondary began a max level Medic upgrade. My main account had over 10 million in Gold but I figured with 10 hours to go, I could either wait to start on Grenadiers (which I no longer use) or begin a parallel upgrade with Pvt Bullit and just wait until the end of the week to start on Grenadiers.
Of course, the other major decisions was to avoid opening my Trader Tickets today. I’m still bent on working on upgrading my 4th Rocket Launcher for the time being. I feel that will give my the most bang for my buck in the short term mostly in handling Hammerman Strikes Back days as I now have a layout where the majority of my defense are clustered around the beach and the later defenses hang around the HQ in case of Critters. With the 4th Rocket Launcher, I can position it to a side that can cover the HQ and enough of the beach while my other three Rocket Launchers cover the rest of the front area. Either way, I’m eager to see the efficacy when these two near completion.
Still no word on the other two updates. So that means this week will be a bit bland. We might hear next weekend about the update since the developer builds seem to be handed out a day or two before release. But right now, there’s little said outside of people waiting for the Weapon Lab. Someone on Discord mentioned an upgrade to the Statue Storage but I didn’t see it on the developer build videos so I doubt that will be a thing.
Speaking of the Weapon Lab, I read an interesting thing either on Discord or Reddit where the rational behind the Weapon Lab mostly was to counteract the Bombardier just because these troops can out range most defenses. In a way, that sounds logical as currently the bulk of my opponents work in some combination of Bombardiers. And they do so successfully. Also, in my case, I tend to deploy three prototypes in anticipation for Hammerman Strikes Back days, which involve at least two AoE type of defenses. That leaves the last one usually being a Shock Blaster or Doom Cannon. But neither feel competent against Bombardiers still. A 4th prototype would allow me to use another combination like a Grappler, which I do miss or perhaps a Sky Shield. I mean, I can envision a defense setup where you have 4 Rocket Launchers next to a Damage Amplifier inside of a Sky Shield. If you stick it back far enough, that setup might upset a lot of combinations that normally might be successful.
Either way, more progress. Eager to see tomorrow’s Hammerman Strikes Back and see how my defenses will hold. I expect that they should be getting more difficult now that we have a new level of upgrades. I might do a quick round of auto-destroys on NPC bases then wait until defending to start any upgrades to my Rocket Launchers to see how they might change the usual Hammerman Strikes Back play.