Cashbot HQ: CFO Battle Strategy

[WizardHawk]

Access: Toons will begin to be offered tasks for parts starting at Donald’s Dreamland task stage. Instead of Merits, you must earn Cog Bucks to gain entrance to the CFO elevator for promotion. You may earn these after you have a full suit by defeating cashbots in any building, street battle, or Mint run.

Difficulty: Medium Hard/Challenging. Goons can do up to -30 damage each and there are lots of them at the end stages of the battle

Definitions:
CFO: The Cashbot Boss you have to defeat in the Cashbot HQ. The Sellbot HQ has a VP and the Cashbot HQ has a CFO. This stands for Chief Financial Officer.
Cluster/Clustering: Three or more goons within the same general space in the CFO battle.
Crane/Crane operator: An overhead crane with a powerful magnet on the end of a long cord and/or the toon that uses it for the battle. The crane can pick up safes, active goons, and/or stunned goons.
Goon/Goonies: The same small robots with a light coming out the front that does damage to any toon caught within the light. There are 3 colors of goons and different sizes within at least one group. The battle starts out with mini yellow goons and moves to larger yellow ones, rust colored goons, and finally red color goons. Each is faster than the last, has a larger light coverage area, stays stunned for a shorter amount of time, and does more damage to the CFO.
Helm/Helmet: The CFO can wear a safe on his head that protects him from any of your attacks. These safes are either put on his head by crane operators tossing one at him when he doesn’t already have one, or after a given period of time without an attack a safe will fall from the ceiling.
Stomper/Stunner/Floor toon: The toons that do not run a crane. Their primary role is to stun goons to protect the crane operators, provide ammunition, and supply toonup treasures.
Treasures/TU’s/Toonups: Each time a goon is stunned it drops one of 6 toonup treasures. These are the same ones found in every playground in ToonTown and have the same values: Cones, Stars, Daisies, Music Notes, Snow Flakes, and Zzzzz’s. They will be left all over the battlefield and cannot be accidentally picked up by toons that are already full on laff points.
Zone: One quarter of the battle room with a crane at its center. The area of the zone is the effective area the magnets can reach. Each zone has an overlap with its neighboring zone.

Entrance:
Just like the Sellbot boss, the Cashbot HQ allows up to 8 toons to enter into an elevator located in the HQ lobby. When you exit the elevator you are greeted by a monkey named Mata Hairy who tells you they are going to set a trap for the CFO and you are divided up into two groups of 4 on either side of him. There is only one long cog battle in this fight as opposed to the two separate battles in the Sellbot VP. This one long battle has much more cogs that come out and a high number of level 12’s. Stock up on your best gags for this one, you will need it. The cog battle takes place in a warehouse style room with safes placed around the outside areas of the room and there is a pair of steel rollup doors.

After beating the cogs, you are all moved into the next room (mid vault room) where the CFO battle is to take place. Mata Hairy appears again and gives some (rather poor) advice on what to do in this battle. You are shown the crane controls and told that you throw a safe to remove the CFO’s helmet and stunned goons to damage him.

The Setting:
The CFO battle takes place in an octagonal shaped room with 4 overhead cranes. The CFO stands directly in the center of the room. You are randomly placed with one other toon into a zone of the room. One of you will become the crane operator, the other a stomper. On most random runs, the toon who reaches the crane first takes it so be fast or be a stomper.

The CFO Battle:
At the start of the battle, the CFO will begin to send out small yellow goons from both of his doors. These goons can be stunned by simply touching them from behind (you do not have to jump on these). The CFO starts WITHOUT a helmet on, so you DO NOT start out throwing safes! Crane operators need to wait for the stompers to stun a goon within reach of their magnet, pick it up, and toss it at the CFO’s head. To pick up an item, the crane operator needs to watch the shadow left on the ground under their magnet as they use the arrow keys to move it forward, left and right, and backward. This causes the magnet to swing. Press and hold the <Ctrl> key to pickup and hold either a stunned goon or safe. You toss it by simply letting go of the <Ctrl> key. It will take practice to learn the exact time to let go for a perfect hit. It is possible to let go too late and actually throw a stunned goon over his head and too low of a hit does not cause any damage. The CFO will spin around and 'target' toons. Once targeted, he throws gears in that direction. These gears do -10 damage, but more importantly will knock a toon off of the crane. Keep an eye on him and step back, or out of his way if he targets you. You have plenty of time to do this if you pay attention.

As you cause damage to the CFO larger, faster, more powerful goons will begin to come out of his doors. These goons cannot be disabled by simply touching them. Stompers will have to actually jump on them to disable them. Each will drop better toonup treasures than the last.

At first, none of your hits on the CFO will actually cause him to be stunned. As you progress you will find that hits with enough damage will cause him to have the same stars flying around his head that signals a stun with any cog/cog boss. This is a good time to throw a safe at him. Safes do much more damage but you must be careful to not wait too long to throw it. The CFO will grab ANY safe thrown at him when he is not stunned. He can also pick up safes left near his treads. When he picks up a safe he will place it on his head and use it as a helmet. When he has a helmet on, he cannot be harmed by any of your attacks. He will also get a helmet after a period of time without any successful hits. This period of time shortens as the battle progresses so make sure you continue to hit him. To remove a helmet, one of the crane operators must hit him quite high in the head with a safe. This requires some practice to master and is one of the hardest throws you have to do. Safes that came from the ceiling due to taking too long to attack him will simply disappear into the floor after you remove it. All other safes removed will return to the floor. You start with 8, and always have 8 safes for use in battle unless one gets stuck in the wall (glitch).

The CFO has the same light panel on his chest that all cogs/cog bosses have. Once it starts flashing red, you are very close to victory. One more hit will probably end the battle. During this end phase, he attacks more often and helmets fall from the ceiling quite fast. It generally takes a team effort to keep the fast-moving reds from hitting the cranes, have someone take off his helmet, and have someone else deliver the last blow. It can take as few as two toons left to win but this is not an easy thing to do.

When you get the last blow in, the CFO will say he is tired of this and head out one of the doors. As soon as he goes through the door a train will run him over and Mata Hairy will return to give you your reward. The normal post-battle dance sequence will happen before you get your prize. What you win in the CFO battles is not the same as with Sell HQ. Instead of winning cards, you win Unite! phrases. I believe you must have joined the toon resistance in order to use these phrases. These phrases appear on your normal speed chat bar under the heading of Unite! Unlike cards, you may use these phrases at any time. You do not have to be in battle to use them and they affect everyone around you. You can win phrases for toonups, gag ups, and/or beans with the beans being the most common.

A word about strategy:
No two groups on test agree about the best possible strategy and any strategy has a hard time working with random groups. In other words, if you are not with a group of all secret friends, it is difficult to employ any one global strategy. Having said that, here are some tips:

Try to keep safes away from his treads. He will pick them up and use them as helmets.

Stompers can help crane operators remove helmets by running into his treads. This causes him to ‘sit down’ so that he can swipe at you and makes it much easier to hit him in the head with a safe.

Attempting to leave toonup treasures near the cranes can help keep the crane operators from having to spend any time away from the crane.

Good stompers can intentionally step into the light of a goon heading toward a crane in order to protect the crane operator from taking a hit. This only needs to be done if you do not think you can jump on it in time.

You start out with 2 toons in each zone. One strategy has each stomper stay in or near their start zone and leaves them responsible for protecting the crane in that zone. This leaves two stompers for each of the CFO’s doors which also helps balance the defense. Stompers simply running around in circles looking for goons can, and do, miss goons that wind up reaching the cranes. You will find it hard to stay within a zone of too many stompers are running around.

Toons will end up leaving the crane to avoid gears or because of getting hit by gears/lights. Some feel that this is a good time for someone else to take the crane, while others believe that the crane should be left for the other toon to have back again. Neither is totally right or wrong but know that taking a crane someone else was using could cause fighting between toons.

Notice that at the bottom right of the large picture you see that I had two safes placed in front of my crane. Doing this will help block goons (the light will still get you but they will turn away as well) but also leaves you lined up for a quick grab and throw at the CFO when he is stunned. By having at least one safe either right in front, or directly behind you you cut the time in half needed to grab a safe and toss is because you won't have any side swing at all.

Here is a link to a thread I made for helping with team strategy and info about the end-game part of this battle.

Extra Info:
You can use the <Esc> key to step away from the crane instead of clicking on the button with the mouse. This may be easier for many of you.

Any additional strategies, tips, or corrections should be placed in this thread so that we keep just one place for everyone to go to get this information.