Vector TD

I found switchback to be too easy.
no life lost, 147564 points.
after lvl 39 I had 78306 gold. As I didn't know what to expect of 40, and being curious about the different towers, I went nuts and bought everything to lvl10.

Gonna try hard now.

Is it just me or are the mark3 reds a bit imbalanced? They shoot up most things easily.

well, I too made it to the top ten for switchback. I've spent some time on TD games but I'm far from being a pro player so there's probably much room for improvement.
At the beginning I've used only a well-positioned red tower, which I've upgraded a couple of times. When a creep would escape I would buy a basic green tower, which I would resell right afterwards (reselling gets you 3/4 of the original tower's value, so it's a very good deal). when my lvl3 basic red tower couldn't possibly hold the waves, I traded it for the ultimate red tower, which I kept as is for most of the game. the problem came from the yellow creeps which are really too fast. To counter them I bought some basic blue towers which I put around the field, within range of my red tower, which I upgraded from time to time. I also bought the strongest green tower at some point and eventually a second rocket tower. All my bonus points were spent in interest, so at the end of the game my bank account was well over $200k. I'm sure there is a much better way and that it is possible to go over 500k.
Also I noticed that occasionally it was possible to send the next wave of creeps before the current one is eliminated, but don't know whether it helps getting a high score...

Mikey - some advice for "no left turns" rounds 1 and 2-

The trick for the first two levels is placing the two green towers. Obviously, you want to put them on the middle wall, but while it's tempting to put them on the corner, *don't*. If you put one exactly on the corner, it will have 4 wall squares in its range, but it will also take up a position best reserved for a damage tower if you want to get past level 10. If you put it one or two squares away from a corner, it will have either 5 or 6 squares in its range. That's wasted space. If you put it four or more squares from the corner, the towers will be out of range from a damage tower on the corner square. So, in turn 1, place two green towers 3 squares from the corner, one to the left and one below. Upgrade one of them. If you wait until you press "send the verticles" before you do this, you'll have enough money to be able to upgrade the other tower in early level 2. I lose 1 life in level 2, and then nothing until the mid-teens, where I haven't quite found an optimal strategy yet.

@ vozome

I played switchback again, using your ideas.
In the end I had 7 lifes left, 303460 gold and 404500 points.
I have to fully agree with you on the yellows, they are simply too fast.

my final look was

0 0000000000000000000
0 0000000000000000000
0 0
0 0
0000111110000000000 0
0 0000 0
0 0000 0
0 1133311000 0000 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0001122211 0000000000
0 0 000
0 0 000
0 0111110000 00 000
0 00 000
0 00
00000000000000000
0000000000000000000000

The 1s are mark1 lvl1 blues.
the 2/3s are mark3 lvl2/3 reds.

I don't think its possible to get more than 350k or 400k at most in money, but of course I could be wrong.

Woohoo, I managed to get 1st place on Round the Twist, with 460,260.

I'm sorry, ya'll, but this was WAY too easy.
I got so bored I just quit.

switchback is easy -- i just got the second highest daily score on the second try

here's how:

get basic red to lv.10, then in that square, get a basic blue on all four corners and then the best reds(only two of them) in the center, nothing gets by

I managed to get in the mid 400k for the normal maps, but then I saw an the leaderboards that a Rak777 got over 800k for the 2nd map: clearly, he knows something that I don't!!
like, what exactly affects scoring??

dear Jay,

Your website is the best, I love it, You post all the best
Games.I have a problem (like everybody else...)
I only have computer time on weekends.
so could you realease all tower defence games on Saturday,
Please?(T D games are the best in the WORLD)

love:
------(personal information)

I am loving this TD. It's actually pretty easy to beat completely on easier maps. Haven't played harder maps though.

woah...
steep learning curve...
can't even finish Elemantal-ish (First 'Hard' Map)
granted, the 'Easy' Maps should be considered tutorials and not be taken serious. but hey, can anyone give me some hints for the first Hard map???

35/40 is max... now for the 3rd time in a row.
i'm lacking the money for needed upgrades, but always shy away from the meager 3% for the bonuspoint...

So, what's the trick in getting more points like 200k + ? completed first map for only 28k points.. is it just how much money you collect or something??

THEY CHANGED THE RULES!!!
just as i was playing... hit reload some 15 min ago, and now the maps are grouped "easy/normal/hard" and each map has 50 instead of formerly 40 levels...

(and no, i couldn't solve Elementa-ish in the past couple of hours...)

Heng: I beat Elementalish, but it was last night and I can't give you detailed step-by-step stuff. Basically, here were the tactics I more-or-less used:

Choose a single area as a kill-zone. It should be a place where your towers cover a maximal amount of creep-path, like a corner or a narrow wall with paths on both sides of it. Use the first kind of blue towers as a force multiplier -- sprinkle them in with the rest of your towers, in moderation, to keep the enemies in your kill-zone for as long as possible. The third kind of red tower is extremely strong. At the end, I was rolling with three or four of them with range-bonuses so they were attacking all through each wave. Plan where the bonus-range and bonus-damage towers will go, and place your other towers accordingly. Don't buy too soon -- there's no point in overkill, you just miss out on your interest rates.

Good luck!

PS: oh, and the red rockects type 3 are now single shot, rather than double... seems like someone read the comments and beefed it up...
damn, now i never gonna finish the level (Elem...)

Thumbs up! really cool game, I loved it.

btw, it's one of the rare games I actually finished!

I can't even get past the easy maps...

I'm going to go sit in a corner and cry now.

Great game, though

It looks like there were more levels added recently. When I beat this game, it said I was on level 50 out of 40 (see image link below)

http://img456.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vectortdownageuz8.png

I also managed to rack up a large score (2,054,401) by using lots of unupgraded tier 3 red towers! I used all my bonuses on interest. LOL.

After, what I feel, was the travesty of flash circle, David Scott made a resounding comeback and put out what is truly the best tower defense game I have yet played. The music, graphics, difficulty, everything is just perfect. While there could be more things, this game is excellent.

My only gripes are that it is on candystand and that horrendous orbit commercial.

I really love the "Round the Twist" map. If I had an account, I think I would have pulled the high score. I think.

My victory setup. http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=6f6n34g

I agree with Brand pretty much entirely. Candystand fails, and Orbit fails ever harder.

One more thing. Does ANYONE know what controls your score?

Notes that apply to at least easy and medium (single-path) levels:

Interest:

Interest is precisely what it sounds like - an investment. At the beginning, I was a bit wary of spending a bonus on 3% extra, but I gave it a shot, putting every bonus but two into the interest pool.
So worth it.
You get massive payoffs later in the levels if you start the spawn before any builds and upgrades you choose. This combines with my next things...

In the beginning, damages are useful, of course, and range less so. However, if you choose to follow the interest path, range is better. Why? You can afford a lot of the Red Rockets with interest and all you need is a pair of ranges to make them hit most of the map if they're centered.

Towers forged of pure win. Anything I make is simply buildup towards the making of Red Rockets. By the end of the games, I have nothing but a cluster of Red Rockets around 2 range towers and a load of scattered blue slows to maximize exposure.

You know how they switch targets when they die? Yeah. Make a load of red rockets and put just enough range that they're almost always firing. Corners are fine to skip. Why? The red rockets can switch targets to things outside of their normal range. This allows you to unleash massive barrages of rockets and watch as they systematically annihilate everything left in the level. It's beautiful

Wow. Mr.Scott must have been reading. The font in the game is better to read now. 50 waves w00t! Thats good because it's more challenging. Great game!

-Khrisper

Thanks to:
Jay and David

The level 1 blue towers are great.
For 300$ you slow down multiple targets allowing your offensive towers more time (thus more damage)

You can get a long way with only a couple of damaging towers and a splattering of blue multi slows round the map.

I will never ever again buy any Orbit product.

@ BattleAxe

Nice picture and all, but how did you do it?

interest 30%
lvl 50/40

something doesn't add up.

I've got one complaint about the game. After playing the brilliant DesktopTD, this one feels very, very slow. It takes ages to get through 40 levels. Even the "Send next wave" button is disabled for a long time after launching a wave for no apparent reason.

Easy to fix, though. Add a speed slider, please. :)

Updated version:

Just wanted you to know that there now are two "beginner"-maps added to the game.

Knudsen

I'm a bit annoyed, I had managed to get 4,447,000 points on snaking path and when given the opportunity to submit my score (which was then approx 1.5x the current top score of the leaderboard!!) I got a message saying "this score is not valid for this game".
It's probably possible to do much more. I used the same strategy as before,

that is to use as little cash as possible, hold with a basic red tower, level it up to 3, couple it with a blue tower, then with a basic purple tower and 2nd-tier green tower to get rid of the annoying green units, sell towers as soon as they become useless, get 3rd-tier red tower when the creeps HP are in the 15000-20000 zone, get a few blues, hold with that configuration as long as possible, get a second red tower, upgrade them as slowly as possible, adding blues as needed. After level 40 the cash goes through the roofs. At the very last level, I had only 4 full-powered red towers and probably could have handled it with less.

Knudsen - they weren't added, it's the same set of levels as before. They're just reclassified - before maps 1-4 were "easy" and 5-8 were hard, now 1-2 are "beginner", 3-5 are "normal", and 6-8 are "hard".

WOW, amazing game, I got 1.8 million points in "elemental-ish" map which as of right now is the high score. The key to getting this score, or a much higher one is:

COMPOUND INTREST!!!

First waves: Start with a red splash tower, somewhere where it can shoot at the whole line of creeps twice, it will wipe out the first wave, and the second with no problem. Before you upgrade the red tower, make a green one on wave 3. Later build another one. Now upgrade the two green towers as slowly as possible, the more money in the bank at when you send in a wave, the more interest.
KEY POINT! Whenever you get a bonus, always, always, always spend interest. Otherwise there is absolutely no way to get a high score.
Middle waves: By this time, you should have 2 green towers, close to together, that are fully upgraded. At this point, place a slowing tower or two near by. Use the 300$ one. You should be doing just fine until you see a red wave coming up with about 15K health. Send in the wave, to collect interest, and then instantly build a red rocket tower near the middle of the playing field. Yes it's a big investment, but not as big as building and upgrading anything else you would need to wipe out this wave. At this point, you can sell your green towers, and red one, but leave the slowing towers in place. The rocket tower should be able to beat the next few levels. If it looks dicey, add a few slowing towers. Now slowly upgrade the rocket tower, so that it never takes more than 2 shots to kill a creep. This should work nicely until a green wave comes in. At this point, build and upgrade a lvl 3 green tower (one that bounces twice)and upgrade it a few times, now place it in the middle of 3 or 4 slowing towers.
Home stretch: You should be gaining money steadily, don't panic if one or 2 creeps make it through, you do have 20 lives. Build more and more slowing towers, until you have 10-15 scattered around the map. Keep upgrading your rocket tower until it is fully upgraded, then build another one, and start upgrading that one. When you see a green wave coming, upgrade or build more of the advanced green towers. On the last level, I had 12 or so fully upgraded rocket towers, but on wave 45 I only had 2. The difficulty really picks up in the end. But the slowing towers allow the rockets enough time to pick the creeps apart. On the last stage, I had about 1.2 million $$ that I hadn't spent, talk about compound interest!

1. Always upgrade or build just AFTER sending in a wave, so you get interest on the money you are about to spend.
2. Always use your bonus points to buy the interest upgrade.
3. Upgrade as little as possible for each wave, keep as much money as you can in the bank.
4. Never play on "auto" mode, you need time to build between waves.
5. Never send in a wave before the previous one is destroyed completely, even if your defenses can handle it, you won't get the interest on the money that you will get for killing the creeps still in the map.

Good luck!

I notice the leaderboards are different depending on where you live. This means that I only see scores for my country (I think), not world scores. I don't really like that. Candystand lets me "change country" with a button at the top left at any time, which lets me view the other leaderboards, but I don't think there's any way to view all countries' scores combined in one single leaderboard.

Does anyone know any different?

about scoring, from what I gather,
the bonus score you get in between levels is more or less the interest you gather (sometimes the two values differ by a handful of points, I'm not sure why...). for instance, if you have $100,000 at the end of a level, and 12% interest, you get $12,000 dollars and a 12,000 point boost.
therefore, how you spend your money towards the beginning of the game is very important.
suppose you spend all of your bonus points on interest.

If you spend $1000 which you could have kept on lvl 5, that's 1.46m off your final score. The table goes as follow:

on lvl5 : 1.461m
on lvl10: 1.064m
on lvl15: 0.672m
on lvl20: 0.371m
on lvl25: 0.180m
on lvl30: 0.076m
on lvl35: 0.028m
on lvl40: 0.009m
on lvl45: 0.002m

so try to refrain from buying that red rocket until you really need it!

Interests accrued in the final level don't count in the final score, so it's no use reselling all the towers at the very end. But during the game, do sell your towers as soon as they are useless! you don't get interest on the money you've invested in towers. If a tower is not going to be used during one level sell it!!

Finally I thought you could max your score by keeping your lives to a maximum and sending vectoids early. That's not true. you lose a handful of points when you lose one life, but building an emergency tower to prevent a creep from escaping would cost you much more in your final score!!! So don't build something special for those yellow or green waves, just make sure they don't completely kill you!! sending vectoids early which you can do after most of the current wave is eliminated actually gets you less points, because you don't earn interest on the creeps which are not eliminated yet.

in my last game I did slightly over 5m, but I think 8m are certainly doable.

Hey!
Glad you are liking my game. I do read all comments (which is why the game was updated) and there will be another update in a week.

JIG is one of the top referrers, so thanks! And if you would like anything changed in the game please just post a comment or hunt down and join the novelconcepts forum.

The font on the upgrade button still needs to be cleaned up. All the rest of the fonts are now much easier to read but I still can't read or have a very hard time reading the text on the upgrade button. Removing the background would probably fix it.

I enjoy the game!

I love the game! It absolutely kills my productivity. Playing flash games normally when I have downtime at work, it would be nice if there were speed options, which was requested in an earlier post.

Also, creeping into the older gamer demographic, I'm starting to want more reward for my hours invested. I love saving up cash to completely annihilate everything on the last level, so it would be great if you could just keep the levels going at increased difficulty. I think it was Desktop TD that had that option, but it was on expert so I pretty much sucked.

After I've beaten all the levels, I just want to sit back and see how long I can kill crap on the easy levels until I die (yes I'm the type of guy that will max all of his players stats on MLB 07 and hit homeruns off the short, fat zero stat guys for 9 innings). I'm envisioning a map filled completely with red rockets and blue towers, but right now I know in the end all I have is a score, when all I want to do is fight to the death.

It feels like I'm sounding pretty demanding, but it seems like all of these requests are pretty easy to implement. Sorry if I'm completely contradicting the purpose of your games!

This probably doesn't matter for the high scores.. nonetheless, the help implies that the grey monsters are tougher to kill until, what.. the boss is killed?

David, can you explain this?

It would be good if we could replay the last level instead of having to go all the way back to the beginning to make a slight improvement.

I've played a fair bit and it's a lot of fun. I have a few things I would like to share.
Firstly, at the risk of calling down a nerfing I went full interest on switchback and built as many blue 2 towers as I could and the results were interesting. That tiny half-step back whenever a vectoid is struck is enough to push them backwards with enough towers. They travel in the opposite direction of their facing and can move through walls and towers and even partway off the map.
I don't know if it can be done, but if a fast-forward button could be implemented for those waves you just know won't make it I would be glad not to have to wait a minute for them to make it to my defenses.
As much fun as it is, it feels like forever between starting a map and getting to the point where I can experiment with different configurations. It would be nice if there were an option to start a map at a later level with the money (at 3% interest) and bonus credits I would have earned had I legitimately played up to say, level 30. Obviously my score wouldn't count, but I could experiment.

A "fast forward" button would be great - what I'd really also like is a "restart round" button, that would reset to the state before I sent the vectoids. I've been playing the harder maps and I often get to level 12 or so without a hitch then make a mistake - which is really painful since I have to wait 10-15 minutes before I get to the interesting part again.

This is an addicting game... The way i found works well is make 2 red rockets fully upgraded with 7 of the +25% dmg towers near them. rest of the money went to lvl 1 blue towers to keep vectors always moving slow. got 85000 on intermediate map.

awesome game.cant do the hard levels, but normal and easy are still fun

oh god the last level is so hard.

I can't beat the easy level, Switchback. Can anyone show me the set up they've used?

Easy and medium aren't any real trouble but I'm having a problem even getting started on the hard levels. All of the previous strategies required everything to come by my entire base twice, while the split paths mean that never happens in any of the hard maps.

Any simple builds for the first 10 levels or so without losing any lives and having a reasonable stock of money?

Just a note regarding building up $$ via interest...

Don't forget to send the VERY FIRST wave before placing your first tower.

Someone with more time on their hands can figure out how much that $8 will amount to by the end of the game.

Damn these addicting TD games anyway...

I finished the first level with a crazy switcharoo of greens and reds for the first ten rounds, then I just focused on making reds. By the end, I had three level 10 smart rocket towers (all three with 75% damage and 25% range), and a huge spread of blue beam level 1's all over the map to slow down the dudes.

Not MUCH of a win, but yeah.
-TGP-

In switchback i got to lvl 49.
Didn't get that high a score though.

Made a printscreen just before i lost my last life.

http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/5065/vectorvx7.jpg

for the guy that 50/40 lv, wtf happened? error in game or glitch or something? whatever but its kinda wierd...

Wow, "No Left Turns" is incredibly difficult. Checking the leaderboard, it doesn't look like anyone can beat it. In fact, I consistently get 31,000 points on level 29, and that seems to be as good as anyone can do.

Anyone have any better luck?

This game has really attracted my attention at work. I have played and beaten all the maps but the Hard one. Working on good scores for the lower ones. So far here is my end for Switchback.

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/1176/switchbackgk9.jpg

One thing i heard people talk about is selling then rebuying. You will actually lose money on this. for instance.

For the sake of argument and ease of numbers. if you spent 10k on a tower. you get back 7500. then gain at most 30% of the 7500 in interest for 2250 totaling 9750. so you will actually lose 250 per tower by selling and rebuying. and this is the max interest you could get in the game. at level 45.

I made a screen shot just before i died.
http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/3363/vectortdscreen1mc0.png

I've finished the first 5 maps... but not very high score 4,000,000

The slower the creeps the better.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u14/abdiel_00/VectorTD.jpg

Great game, but PLEASE add some speed controls! This game just takes way, way, way too long to play through.
If there was a 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x option that would be awesome.

Not sure whether it's any good or not, but I reached level 50 with 20 lives and a score of 4,166,870 on Switchback, however only had $1485 left. I cannot see the trick to gaining so much money and upgrading towers, as I was easily spending anything up to $8000 a time upgrading towers after a few waves of saving.

Well, anyway, it's an amazing game and my favourite TD!

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/7546/tdscore4ew4.jpg Built a rank 1 red tower where the damage bonus is in the pic and fully upgraded, at about level 20 or so replaced it with rank 3 red and a few scattered rank 1 blues. Built 2 more rank 3 reds and upgraded all towers to rank 10 eventually. Keeps me busy for a few hours, it never gets boring!

Keyboard shortcuts would be a great feature! It enables more focus on strategy, and allows people using touchpads on laptops to play without a disadvantage.

e.g. u for upgrade. n for send vectoids, s for sell.

Also, a "front" targeting mode would be useful, to allow towers to target the creep that is the furthest along the path.

Good game.
I scored 7,470,819 and almost 1.5 million in cash, in the switchback map.

I had by the end of the game a 4X4 square of the rank 3 red towers , all in lvl 10, and in the other side of the path all blue towers rank 1 in order to slow them down. the interest is important if you want a high score, I had 30% in level 45.

No Left Turns:

Its not even worth trying the other levels stick to no left turns.

I'm in a battle to complete before a house mate of mine.

He's up to level 34 and I can get to level 30 without losing a life. nevertheless i lose them all on the fast level there.

Max score 1.45m so far
House maate about 1.7m

Top score on that level to date some chap got over 4.5m

crazy.

Hello,

I was wondering how in the world people on Candystand playing switchback map get 10M+ score??? What's the secret???

I beat this map routinely without any issues, but I am yet to get more then 4.5M score

Thanks a lot!

i got 38,554

I've managed to get to level 30 on no left turns. There's a video of someone who's managed to get to level 37 on youtube.

Now up to level 35 with a score of 1.8million+. At that stage the increase in toughness between each level becomes insane. I'm using loads of blue ones to slow down the baddies and a couple of red threes boosted to level 4. I used four of my bonuses on extra power and two on extra range.

You know, I've always found it fun to play on switchback and spam the screen with tons towers on the last few waves. I think it's amazing that you can actually pass all 50 waves with neither of the heavy-damaging towers (the red rockets and the purple slowing lazers). Green towers do fine if you have enough of them :)

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/9829/greentowershf5.png

I am perplexed. I have only been able to score 4,100,000 on any map in Vector TD. Yet, I see the high scores are in the 18,000,000 range. The instructions are not clear on scoring. Is there anyone who can help me with this. It's driving me (even more)nuts.

The key is in spending the most minimal amount of money possible and placing your towers so you need very few. As well as getting points for destroying the vectoids you get a point for every dollar in interest you receive. Spend every bonus point as soon as you receive it in extra interest (you end up with 33%). If you do this correctly you end up scoring 500,000 - 1,500,000 per level on the last five or ten levels.

I usually end up with 6-8 level ten red threes and lots of level one blue ones on the easy levels. Remember to be as frugal as possible with your spending as the value of each dollar goes up exponentially as the game begins. It's even worth losing a few lives at the beginning if it means you save a decent amount of cash.

I just tried (on Switchback) building nothing but blue ones once I could afford them, and only during the waves before a yellow wave and the one after the first non-grey wave I lost a life on. I ended up dying on level 49, with a score of 3,939,125 and a bank of $286.
Below is my defense (in ascii art):


1..1111111111111111111
1..1111111111111111111
1....................1
1....................1
111111XXXXXXXXXX111..1
1..............X111..1
1..............X111..1
1..111XXXXXXX..X111..1
1...........Z........1
1...........Y........1
111111XXXX..XXXX611111
1...........X......111
1...........X......111
1..111XXXXXXX..X1..111
1..............11..111
1..............11.....
11111111111111111.....
1111111111111111111111

where the 1's are level 1 blue ones, the 6 is a level 6 blue one, and the X's, Y, and Z are level 10 blue ones. My first two towers were a level 1 red one at Y and a level 1 green one at Z; I sold both before the second yellow wave.

Got to the 34th wave on "Round The Twist" and for some reason I just cannot seem to ever get to wave 50 :-O....My score was 1790243 and Don't know if that's good or anything?

Yo. Our score was:

18 lives left
675983 points

being as we are noobs that's not bad.

Amazingly enough, you can finish Switchback with only Splash (Red1) and Slow (Blue1) for the whole game. It's surprising how effective it is, even though you're barely capable of doing 2,500 per hit maxed-out.

Here's what it looked like when the game was finished. The colors aren't darkened since this was taken right before I sent the last wave.

7,852,027 points at the end and I didn't lose a single life. But I wound up spending the majority of my leftover money on the last 2 waves. I know it's an easy map, but it's quite different playing with a restriction like this.

I think you should add a more powerful weapon because red rockets are the most powerful and you need about 4 at level 10 to beat a medium level game.

Whoops, that URL was messed up. Next time, I'm not going to attempt to use HTML tags if I don't know how to use them properly. Not to mention the image was taken off for some reason. The same image: http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/6498/comboyt2.png

I find everything to be much harder without rocket (Red3) towers, but I like the challenge. It seems like a good score depends on having them though. But I still managed to get 7.8 million without using anything above level 1 towers.

I finished Switchback with about $1,700,000 and I dont think thats really an absolute max. My tips are as follows:

Dont put towers on the ends of paths right at the U Turns, put them 4 squares from the end, this way they get to deal with the enemy properly each time they pass, rather than enemies coming past two sides at once.

Use the first red tower as your first purchase, followed by a level 1 blue. Together, these can last 15 or so levels just by upgrading them.

*But now, how to make so much money. The key is to spend an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM at all times. If the last enemy is killed just as he's leaving the range of your last tower, you've done a good job.

**Obviously, always go for interest rates as an upgrade.

*** Be aware that the early stages of the game are the most important for getting a lucrative amount near the end. If you were to look at the cash levels of my game, it would look like an exponetial graph almost. Aka starting off very flat and then in the later levels, absolutely rocketing, so its vital that you start to save as much as possible in the beggining; when wrongly buying a tower can sometimes halve your money.

**** I only buy the 3rd red tower when the enemies have around 30,000 hp.

*****By the end of the game, you'll probably have blue towers intersperced about every 3-4 spaces around the track. (If on a medium difficulty level, probably every 2-3) and a minimal number of level 10 3rd tier red towers.

****** Some tips for efficiency. Only press the 'send vectoids' button when you have killed all enemies, this way you earn interest on the maximum amount of cash.

If you're going to sell something, do so before interest has been earned, and buy items after interest has been earned.

Do not be afraid to loose lives, especially at the start of the game. If you buy a level one green tower to temporarily mop up a couple of stragglers, that'll cost you $25 to buy and then sell at a lower price, at the start of the game, if you're looking at totally maximising money. This isn't worth it.

can't get past level 16 in no left turn. Needs some tuning. Just annoying to start over every time.

For those who care, you can start NLT by going green tower to level 3, and place 5 squares up from bottom in center. This allows you to attack the left side before the right. Kill them and then sell green tower.
Buy red tower and place 7 squares from bottom in center. When it destroys 2 targets you'll have enough to buy a green tower to put 3 squares below. Then sell red tower at the end and power up green to level 5. Go through next several levels to bonus level, where you need more towers. Many combinations will work but I've only gotten 20 lives past the yellows once, and I never made it past level 16. Looks like just a dead end to me.

PLEASE MEET MY UNSTOPPABLE FORCE!
at this link:
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/5568/vectortdscreen1ze1.png

This is so easy! First time and I got 6 million (or 600 000, can't remember). I could've gotten way better but I messed up at the beginning. The trick is to save a lot until you get 100 000 money. After that, you virtually have unlimited gold. Just get only interest increase with your bonus points, mass blue towers and let the rockets do the damage. At green levels upgrade your towers, but don't waste too much money.

Just some of my thoughts on the game:

0. Candystand's website makes it WAY too !@#$ing easy to blow away your game by clicking on any of the gazillion links spread all over the page.

0.1. It may be helpful to note that the order of vectoid types follows an 8-long repeating pattern of Blue, Red, Blue, Green, Blue, Yellow, Blue, Purple. Every 5th level, however, is Gray+Bonus instead of what the pattern would give. This gives a distribution of 40% Blue, 20% Gray, and 10% each of Green, Purple, Red, and Yellow.

(This is probably why the original game had 40 levels: 5 times 8.)

0.2: Like in Flash Circle TD, Vector TD's towers suffer from the deficiency that two un-upgraded towers are better than a single tower upgraded twice:

* A single tower upgraded twice (I'll call this +2) does 90% more damage than a single +0 tower. Two +0 towers do 100% more damage than a single +0 tower.
* Two towers costs as much as a single +2 tower, which at least is better than how it was in Flash Circle TD, where a +2 tower cost *more*
* If they're not next to each other, two towers can cover a much greater range than a single +2 tower.
* Two towers can each fire simultaneously, meaning twice the speed.
* Two towers can have separate targets (or sets of targets). This is most significant for blue towers, which are intended to slow; here, a +2 blue tower is half as effective as two +0 blue towers, because the +2 blue tower can only hit 4 targets (and it is forced to lock onto those same 4 as long as they are in range.)

1. Interest is key to survival, not just getting a high score. You get 28 creeps per wave. Each creep is worth $(4 + Level). This means your first wave will net you $140, which is nice -- but your next-to-last wave will only earn you $1484 -- not even enough for a Green Laser III, and a GLIII won't even kill one enemy at level 50.

(Incidentally, when did the amounts increase? It used to be $(3 + Level) per creep. The extra $1 per creep makes a HUGE difference.)

2. This might lead you to consider the strategy of selling off towers to increase your interest, then rebuilding them during the next wave. This strategy, however, will never be viable:

(The following is not a spoiler. However, it is rather long, so I'm putting it in "spoiler" tags so people can expand/collapse it.]

Let's say I is your interest rate (so 3% is 0.03). Consider a tower that costs X to build (this includes any and all upgrade costs). You will get 0.75X back when you sell it, the extra interest gained would be 0.75IX, and it will of course cost X to rebuy it. This works out to a cost of 0.25X and a gain of 0.75IX. Therefore, your net gain G is: G = 0.75IX - 0.25X To come out ahead, you need G > 0. G > 0 0.75IX - 0.25X > 0 0.75IX > 0.25X I > 0.333 [divide both sides by 0.75X] Therefore, to break even, you need an interest rate of 33.3%, and to come out ahead, you need *more* than that. Now, consider this: There are 50 levels, and you get one bonus point every 5 levels. This means there are 10 bonus points. Since you only gain interest when a new wave comes, and there is no 51st wave, the level-50 bonus point is useless for interest rates. Therefore, you have 9 opportunities to increase your interest rate, and each opportunity is worth an additional 3%. This means that the highest effective interest rate you can achieve is your initial 3% + (9 * 3%/bonus) == 30%. Because it has already been shown that you need over 33.3% to come out ahead with this strategy, this is always a losing strategy.

2. The following towers are a waste of money:

* Blue Ray II.

While they do twice as much damage as Blue Ray II, neither blue tower does any significant amount of damage past level 10 or so; the only advantage is the slowing. And Blue Ray I slows 4 targets while its successor only does one.

* All three purple tower types. Let's compare:

Purple I - It looks good on the surface. For only $100 (that's 50%) more than the Red Laser I, you get 2650 damage, 2300% more than the measly 110 damage of a Red Laser I, and better range.

But wait! The Red Laser I has splash damage and a much higher firing rate than the Purple Laser. In fact, for most targets, RL1 does about the same damage as PL1.

Purple II - Actually, this one might be worth it. For only $100 (16.7%) more than the Red Laser II, you get slightly better range and significantly more damage. It will starts being ineffective around level 25.

Purple III - Not worth it at all. For 12% ($300) more than the Red Rocket, you get the following:
- Much smaller range
- Less than 3/4 as much damage
- No automatic retargeting if another tower kills the target while the laser is charging.

You're better off buying 9 L1 blue lasers.

And just to seal the deal, there's an additional clinch: Consider the following:

Green Lasers - +50% damage to Green vectoids (10% of the population), half damage to Red (10% of the population)
Red Lasers - +50% damage to Red vectoids (10% of the population), half damage to Green (10% of the population)
Blue lasers - who are we kidding, these things aren't made to do damage
Purple lasers - +50% damage to Purple vectoids (10% of the population), half damage to Blue vectoids (40% of the population)

That's right, purple lasers do only half damage to the most common vectoid, which comprises FORTY PERCENT of the game!

how can you get more points on this game?

strategy! (no lives lost)(by the way, put all your bonus points into attack ups for the bulbous point) switchback: well I used two green towers to lvl 5 then 1 slower tower and then I go two red towers, all to lvl 10 (except freeze); then get a lvl 3 red tower in the bulbous shaped part further on. save for another 2 lvl 3 red towers then sell all of the other towers (not the lvl 3 reds) buy a load of slowers for around the bulbous area and upgrade 2 towers (set the 2 upgraded ones on strong and the lvl 1 on weak) and just folo the picky!

piccy is here =) just as I won XD

Switchback: 9.9 million points, $2.7 million in cash.

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f244/OtherBill/VectorTD.gif

I'm sure I could do even better, but it appears I'm late to this particular party.

Completed with 3,998,540 points with 11 lives left. suck on that. lol

I am confused how you attain a higher score. I have beaten the game several times with all 20 lives, and in some cases more, but I can never get higher than 5 million. When I go to the leaderboard there are people in the 60 million range (could be cheating?), but there are lots of people in the 10-30 million range for Switchback. Is there something I am completely missing?

The biggest threats to success seem to be the hard + bonus levels and the yellow sprinters.

any advice on the best way to deal with these. i am getting to about level 30ish on the no left turns/elemental maps and these two vectoids are the worst for me!

just gt 1926324 wooo

Beating the game on anything other than 'extreme' is pretty straightforward after a while. i am stuck on about L30, no left turns and cannot get any further. i need help! any thoughts anyone?

I'm not sure what strategy you guys were using, but I put a few red towers up and finished with a score of 10,151,069.

Here's a screenshot.

For fun, I burned about 500,000 of my money during the last stage, because hey - it was fun.

Do the interest until you get extremely bored... then sell everything and cover the map with red rockets, such fun

Here's my strategy:

first I place a bunch of green lasers near the beginning, middle, and end. Then I place a blue ray on either side of the entrance.Then I place other towers along the path (Duh).

I can not get past level 31 on the "frog" level. Does anyone have any strategies to share for this? THANK YOU!!!

I have been working on the frog for i don't know how long, does anybody have a screen shot of when they won. This level is tougher then nails. I don't think Arnold Schwarzenegger could beat this level.

Level 32 for the FROG - but can see no way of going any further.

Have found level 2 purples help a lot...when boosted of course! Would love to get further...

Improved FROG to lv 34 - score 1729367: but have 8 blue soon to be home free and no way to stop them...

Slight improvement, FROG lv.35, score 1821391 - it was actually the hard bonus that killed me! I even had 19 lives until lv.30... so there may be some hope - I think the secret may lie in altering the settings for each tower in the end!

I just wish (and I hope the creator, David Scott, still catches up with these comments on JIG) that we didn't have to play so slowly up until the later levels - maybe a reward % if next group was sent early, as there is no apparent advantage at all in sending the vectors early at the moment.

Can any one beat FROG I got to level 39 and thats it after that it is impossible

My high score set up.

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x272/sanepsyco07/Owned.jpg

My score was 9,222,000 with $2.4 million in cash!!!

9,646,636 on round the twist with over $2,200,000!!

I've just got a score of 11,883,841 with $3,843,858 left on switchback, anyone know if thats a record!?!?

Hey there guys!
I am a huge fan of this game. I have a question about it though. The max score I have been able to get was 4,851,713 and I was wondering how to get a bigger one? I saw where some people had scores of 10 million and bigger. How are they doing that? I have tried maxing my bank (200+k), and I have tried maxing out my towers. What am I doing wrong? Oh, I have been using solely the red rockets and the blue level one lasers.

FTW Tell your red rockets to target the weak!