Alright I probably just really suck, but does anyone have any pointers on level 9 "Flight Plan"? I can finish the level just fine, it's finishing the level with all 24 cores that's making me want to throw my keyboard at the wall. In fact I make it through almost the entire level unscathed, but then the final wave comes with a fucking Rumbler that just. won't. die. I've Backspaced to the last checkpoint 30 goddamn times and restarted the whole level at least 4 times and tried all sorts of different strategies to get at that fucking slug on steroids and I just can't kill it. I've tried lots of Infernos, lots of Lasers, lots of Infernos + Lasers, a Meteor, and an upgraded Tesla (all as much as my resources will allow obviously), and at most I can't get its health down to less than 1/4 before it skedaddles out the door.
There seem to be a bunch of obstacles:
1) Temporals only affect them sporadically. No shit, I have zoomed in on the goddamn thing and watched as a Temporal shoots a wave out with the Rumbler well within its radius, and the goddamn thing doesn't slow down. I'm not kidding. It doesn't help that the Temporal has a fire rate of about once an hour, so even a Level 3 Temporal only has about a 50/50 chance to catch a Rumbler and do anything useful (why the fuck doesn't upgrading a Temporal increase its ridiculously slow rate of fire?)
2) Laser, and to a lesser extent, Inferno towers all have the very annoying tendency to always fire at whichever alien is farthest along the path. Since the Rumbler shows up surrounded by about a dozen lesser aliens, the Lasers always always always fire at the lesser aliens for the entire time the swarm is in their radius, leaving the Rumbler completely unscathed. I've surrounded the path with 4 fucking Laser towers in 1 stretch and watched helplessly as they all fire at every alien except the Rumbler, except for the last half-second its in their radius. I realize it doesn't really fit the genre, but for the purposes of this level I would love the ability to direct the towers to only fire at the massive fucking blue slug, and not the other things that Gun and Cannon towers take care of just fine. Infernos are supposed to have a wide cone of damage, but even at level 3 it only seems to affect the swarm of 5 aliens that flies just ahead of the Rumbler.
3) Probably the biggest obstacle is just how incredibly short the path to the exit is. There are a grand total of maybe 20 tower spots close enough for a Laser to hit the path, and that might sound like a lot, but if you've played the game imagine how fast the damn Rumbler moves.
ETA: D'oh, gave the wrong level name/number.