Too few Darwinians

What to do?

Ok, so I'm in the hub level (I forget what it's called, the place after the Garden), and I have 149 Darwinians saved and about 15 wandering around the rest of the level. Even if I collect every remaining Darwinian I'm still short. I'm assuming it's because I let too many souls slip away. What am I supposed to do now? Restart the level and spend all that time completing it again? Or is there some other way to deal with this?

I'm afraid you have to restart the entire level. Next time, try to kill the virus more slowly and just collect as many souls as possible. Kill one patch of the red virus, then let your engineers collect souls.

This happened too me to but it didn't take that much time to restart the level and collect the Darwinians because I had a better idea of what I was doing and I could create guys at all of the spots I controlled last time. I had 2 engineers following me all of the time to pick up any souls that came out of the red virus.

This post has been edited by Rigdern : 31 March 2005 - 05:53 PM

Though losing units sucks, you're not penalized for it. Send engineers into soul-heavy but still dangerous areas and have a squad fight off any virii that come at them. Also, if you didn't know, you can create engineers near squads, so it works fine to clear a space with your squad, and summon an engineer right then and there. Using these tactics, I got 160 Darwinians before getting to the islands you need to use the dishes to get to and from. Using the same tactics on one of the islands, I got another 105, so beating the second level was easy enough.

I did screw it up the first time, though, which is how I learned to use more aggressive soul-harvesting tactics.

Oh, that's a good idea, Naman. I'll do that next time.

If you're short just a few make sure you grab the ones who are there at the start, in the flat area behind the big tree, apparently they aren't being counted as they aren't near enough to the tree. (With them I got 192 darwinians and still had an entire island to conquer)

The first time I did that level I was 2 Darwinians short (I hadn't figured out that I could terminate an officer and collect his soul).

The second time I did it, I had about 700 Darwinians.

My advice is to get the Darwinians lasers as soon as you can (if you have to restart, your research will continue where it left off, so multiple tries actually make it easier). This will allow you to do what I like to think of as a counter virus. You go into an incubator area with two engineers (or more, if you can) and sometimes a squad. You take over the incubator and brute-force your way into collecting a few souls. The newly spawned Darwinians will defend themselves, certainly, but also kill viruses in the immediate area, thereby producing more souls, and the engineers that you leave there will immediately get to work. You can rapidly turn the tide in an area and build up a large army with efficient soul collection.

mrxak, on Apr 1 2005, 01:57 AM, said:

I hadn't figured out that I could terminate an officer and collect his soul.

The way I do it is to run an officer program, click on an existing officer, then cancel the program becaude it doesn't work on existing officers. It seems like sort of a bug that it kills the officcer you click on seeing as the program didn't actualy work on them. Is it supposed to work like that or am I doing it wrong?

This post has been edited by Picquilarius : 01 April 2005 - 03:41 PM

I completed this mission in what is apparently an unconventional way. I cleared out about half of the virii by the entrance, then snuck out an engineer and converted as many towers as I could. From then on, it was pretty easy.

I had to play it twice too, messed it up the first time as I was too busy with the slaughter and not thinking enough about soul collection. Second time round I controlled all the towers anyway so it was just a case of spawning into each area and cleaning up.

The officer tip is a good one, I find myself often having unused ones.

Just one thing, I can't replay the level now that I've completed it

Ah, I had that once, too. In fact, I had 199 darwinians, so one was missing.
A few of them were still outside – one was continuously encircling an incubator, three had somehow got out of the shield and were now trapped between shield and water. None of then would follow the orders of an officer, they completely ignored it.
Too bad there is no way to convert an officer back to a standard Darwinian without killing it.

On second try, I had almost 300 darwinians. I'd suggest that you get the doc to work on the program manager, so you can run more programs simultaneously, or the engineers, so they can carry more souls at once.
You can create engineers near your squad, so you should do that when you kill virus. The engineers will immediately start to collect souls. If there's an incubator nearby, they'll bring it there, if not, they'll just carry them.
Just be careful to keep their path clear. I never managed to hit one with my lasers, but don't use grenades when they're nearby.

Arion, on Apr 2 2005, 01:18 PM, said:

Just be careful to keep their path clear. I never managed to hit one with my lasers, but don't use grenades when they're nearby.
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Those engineers are tough little guys, I hit one with a direct grenade blast and it didn't seem to bother it too much. Wouldn't want to push my luck tho...

Yeah, I have about 72 Dawinians and none left to gather. Seems they float off... somewhere. I guess that the fact they vanish from the level is never really made clear. I thought they just went back to the level incubators where they were either transformed back into virii if it was still under their control, or Darwinians if you had converted it.

Being able to make an engineer in the vicinity of a squad is a real help.

But now I have to play the level over... one of my least favorite things in any game. I hate replaying levels...

At some point (I am almost certain that it is in Garden or Containment, but I could be wrong), Doc Sepulveda explains where the souls go. They are a kind of 'virtual DNA', and are collected in a central repository (that big, reddish, glowy thing above the world map). They are then recombined, and used to create new DGs.

xander

darwinian, on Apr 9 2005, 04:19 AM, said:

At some point (I am almost certain that it is in Garden or Containment, but I could be wrong), Doc Sepulveda explains where the souls go.

No, it's not that early. Might be after Yard.

Michael B, on Apr 11 2005, 11:41 AM, said:

No, it's not that early. Might be after Yard.
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Yeah it is that early, because I've got the unregistered version and I remember that being said.

I must be thinking of one of the later bits of "story unfolding" then!

Doc Sepulveda explains what the souls are in Garden:

english.txt said:

garden_souls_1 You may have noticed those Virii leaving little red things behind when you killed them. Those are digital DNA...digital souls, if you'll excuse the term.
garden_souls_2 Every living creature in Darwinia has its own digital soul. Originally they were intended for the Darwinians, but the Virus has swallowed most of them up by now.

However, the whole bit about the repository &c. occurs after you beat Yard.

xander