I had the same issue, and multiple levels have the same flaw to some extent. I also had a few levels where I couldn't figure out a reliable strategy without selling and rebuying MEM chips. Still had a lot of fun, though.

Found the dev talking about the pathing: https://github.com/ochadenas/cpudefense/issues/46#issuecomme...

You can't tell from sight which way the attackers will take. It works this way:

- For each level, there are pre-defined tracks.

- Each attacker randomly chooses one of these tracks.

- In other words, the path of an attacker is determined in the moment it starts on the board. For level 8 in particular, 2 out of 5 attackers will take the upper loop, 2 out of 5 the lower loop, and 1 out of 5 will go straight to the CPU.

- The game has no notion of "left" or "right".

Similar for the attackers strengths: For each wave, a maximum value is set. Each attacker randomly gets a number ranging from 0 to this maximum, but you can't tell which one. If you are lucky, there are lots of 0's.