Strategy: Kiting & Daves

WaffleGuy

Colony
This is a post to inform everyone on the forums of a new territory that was previously unexplored, kiting, and why the Slug Disco YouTube channel sent a post specifically about a level two worker on New Home.

History
This new category of strategy came about when ICS Founder Heolx, attempting to do 1.1 on insane with workers only (to take back his workers-only crown from Senior ICS KillerDeath, who had previously done the challenge), was repulsed against the general attack strategy that required a lot of luck for the final wave. In response, he came up with a strategy: Instead of fighting the enemy in one giant pack, you could split them up with a single level three worker, who had the ability to drag a portion of the enemies away to somewhere else. Especially due to the fact that the range of enemies are like, 500 miles, Heolx figured out that you could not only drag enemies away from the battlefield, but keep them there by continuously moving your level three worker around. This worked so well that it got to the point that the challenge itself, 1.1 on insane with workers only, wasn't even a challenge anymore and the Dave meme took off once and for all.

Dave
For those of you who don't know, the Dave meme is an ICS term for any ant who's kiting abilities are so impressive that they are comparable to an ant god. Said god is called Dave (taken from the "ICS Terminology" message in the #library channel of their discord). Anyways, this also has a few variants such as "Daving enemy ants" (kiting enemy ants), but yeah, that sums up what you'd need to know about Dave.

Strategy
As previously mentioned, this opened up a whole new set of strategy that may make 2.2 on hard with workers only, something previously thought very very hard to do, just very hard, by simply just Daving enemy DCHB into the enemy black ants. This would mean history for the insane challenges, as it proves that Daving could be extremely helpful for fighting against large swarms, especially in other levels such as Rising Tide, where you could in theory just Dave all the hermit crabs on the first day. This would allow you to fight more and get more food. And to make things even crazier, you could literally just Dave the waves in The Culling, making the level MUCH more doable on insane, something that only a small group of people have ever done. This may even make the level on hard, with just workers, possible, as it had only previously been done on medium with workers only.

So to sum up, this is a huge field to be explored, and even mastered to the point where many more challenges, like Front Line on hard with workers only, could be possible. It is very young (only a few days old currently), but I do believe that a lot more could be done with the help of it.
 
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WaffleGuy

Colony
So there's been extremely amazing development regarding kiting and Daves in the ICS, and it all has to do with pulling off QotH on hard with workers only. While this thread is still young, I'll also detail the current history of said challenge. KILLER came up with the challenge just a few days ago, and even after 30 tries, failure resulted every time. This is when I came up with the idea of using Dave as a concept to make enemy creatures fight the enemy ants. After presenting this idea to KILLER, we began discussing major strategies and exploiting Daving and DCHB to win the level. Heolx, who was already involved with the challenge, also started discussing this new field of kiting. After much discussion and a few more bits of testing, that brings us to today. Thanks to Heolx and KillerDeath's knowledge and ready-made strategies for the level, I was able to formulate an entire wall of text which details what we have planned for the level. Additionally, a new kiting mechanism was invented by Heolx, called conga lining. This one is essentially just a line of workers with attack off, directed at the enemies. This will sacrifice food, but it works to keep a large amount of enemies occupied with no effort. Using this strategy, we have been able to completely flesh out how we will get past the third and fourth days. So, this is really happening. We may really complete this challenge, with just a bit more testing! This will be the greatest thing that the ICS has ever accomplished, that's what Heolx said anyway.
 
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So there's been extremely amazing development regarding kiting and Daves in the ICS, and it all has to do with pulling off QotH on hard with workers only. While this thread is still young, I'll also detail the current history of said challenge. KILLER came up with the challenge just a few days ago, and even after 30 tries, failure resulted every time. This is when I came up with the idea of using Dave as a concept to make enemy creatures fight the enemy ants. After presenting this idea to KILLER, we began discussing major strategies and exploiting Daving and DCHB to win the level. Heolx, who was already involved with the challenge, also started discussing this new field of kiting. After much discussion and a few more bits of testing, that brings us to today. Thanks to Heolx and KillerDeath's knowledge and ready-made strategies for the level, I was able to formulate an entire wall of text which details what we have planned for the level. Additionally, a new kiting mechanism was invented by Heolx, called conga lining. This one is essentially just a line of workers with attack off, directed at the enemies. This will sacrifice food, but it works to keep a large amount of enemies occupied with no effort. Using this strategy, we have been able to completely flesh out how we will get past the third and fourth days. So, this is really happening. We may really complete this challenge, with just a bit more testing! This will be the greatest thing that the ICS has ever accomplished, that's what Heolx said anyway.
This is so smart, if I try this level again I will use this thread as a tutorial. Thank you very much for taking the time to post this.
 

WaffleGuy

Colony
This is so smart, if I try this level again I will use this thread as a tutorial. Thank you very much for taking the time to post this.
It's only useful for workers only though, I'd generally kill the underground food at the beginning to make more spitters rather than use them against the waves. But yeah, we're working hard on this every day, perfecting the strategy.
 
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