Help with strategy?

[Paul]

Hi!

It sounds like you’ve got plenty of upgrades, but make sure you have upgraded the health of the structures as this will make your structures last far longer against battleships.

Also, make sure you have enough energy regeneration so that all of your guns can fire.

As for strategy in the level it sounds like you need to spend more on mining early on. Use the quiet time at the start of the level to really mine as much as you can, remember the enemies come from the same places each time so you can learn which asteroids are safe at the start.

Laser turrets need to be upgraded to maximum to reach battleships effectively, use a combination of these and railguns.

I hope that helps!

[usagibouzu]

Thanks for the reply. I’ll play level 6 a few more times and upgrade health. About what level upgrade would you recommend, just so I have an idea?

[Paul]

To get credits you can try playing harder difficulty settings too.

For the health upgrade, the more you have the more battleship blasts your turrets can take. You should only need a few points on this upgrade to be able to pass the level.

[frostilicus]

Just an FYI: If you don’t have the credits for the upgrades and you’re on a gather/survive mission, you can always build build build! You can easily outbuild their attacks and have a massive surplus of credits to continue building when you’re attacked. I completely drained a mission of credits before the time was up, only using the Power Node and Miner structures.
I did this with a level five power gain, a level two structure build time, and nothing else to modify structures.
Note: This also works on, at least the easy, mining mode. I gathered all resources (end of the mission requirements) without taking any damage to my main structure, so I sold all the structures and let them attack. Something like 41000+ credits at that point with just under 60000 credits gathered.

[usagibouzu]

Wow, I’m very surprised at how often and quickly you guys are replying. Thank you so much for your replies. I was able to beat that mission, now I’m stuck on he one where you have to survive for ten minutes. However, I’m slowly building up my upgrades and getting closer and closer to beating it. Is there one specific upgrade you (or anyone else reading) would recommend over others? At the beginning I kind of focused on the mineral generation, until I realized that it wasn’t as helpful as I thought.

[Paul]

"usagibouzu":2qy5xcdc wrote:

Is there one specific upgrade you (or anyone else reading) would recommend over others? At the beginning I kind of focused on the mineral generation, until I realized that it wasn’t as helpful as I thought.[/quote:2qy5xcdc]

I’d definitely recommend the extra laser turrets for the station to begin with, then the increased power generation speed and health of structures. Once you have plenty of power generation, I’d go for some upgraded EMP range, as this can really help you survive longer when you can stun bigger ships for a long time.

[frostilicus]

Another way, if you’ve already deviated from SentinelLord’s upgrade strategy (This is how I did it this time around):
Put your first mission’s credits into laser, the next three missions into credit production, then the next four into energy production. Of course, during this, you can redo missions/do the survival game to get more credits to get the other turrets. A few levels (six or so, I think?) into the credit production, and you are getting just about enough credits to supplement one lvl1 Miner, which was a great help to me.
After the fifth mission is where you need to have 200 credits set aside to get the anti-missile structures, but it’s not completely necessary as you can survive with just lasers at that point.
Even when you get to the mission with the next-higher unit (I can’t remember what it’s called), you don’t need anti-missile structures because they only fire a high powered rail-type weapon, just upgrade/expand your lasers to meet their range at that point.
The only problem you should have is with the large groups of enemy fighters – starting at mission seven or eight? – at which point, you can still survive, but it’s a harrowing battle without the missiles.
After getting seven or so levels into power production, I haven’t had a problem with fast expansion (We’re talking building three Miners, two Lasers, an anti-missile, and maybe a missile launcher at the same time, while being attacked.), so the power production is a must have. I understand that means I have a high surplus of power being wasted, but I’m still not at the point where I need to get the batteries, even with one or two rail guns built (Which, even at the point I’m at, are a waste, but having 2-3+k credits I can’t get rid of makes me want to spend a lot more).

Note: At the level my credit production is at, I can build Power Nodes almost nonstop with minimal hit to my Miners’ production. Also, like I said above, the amount of power I have is almost never reduced past 3/4 full, and even that usually only happens on massive assaults.

@SentinelLord – Do you think the difficulty will increase with later updates? At the easiest difficulty setting, I can ‘complete’ the Mining mission (drain all asteroids) before seeing many of the tier 3 (Calling fighters tier 1, the next unit up tier 2, etc) enemy units, and I get a large number of credits to spend on upgrades after I suicide (as there is no ‘win’ in the survival/mining gameplay).

[Paul]

"frostilicus":1hm0k3ss wrote:

@SentinelLord – Do you think the difficulty will increase with later updates? At the easiest difficulty setting, I can ‘complete’ the Mining mission (drain all asteroids) before seeing many of the tier 3 (Calling fighters tier 1, the next unit up tier 2, etc) enemy units, and I get a large number of credits to spend on upgrades after I suicide (as there is no ‘win’ in the survival/mining gameplay).[/quote:1hm0k3ss]
No, the easier difficulty modes were actually added as a result of people saying that it was too difficult, they will never be made harder. A pro like yourself will have to play the harder difficulty settings instead

[frostilicus]

Haha, that’s fine too. Do you know if the higher difficulty settings grant more credits for upgrades, or is it similar to the easier settings?

[Paul]

"frostilicus":17zpe6ce wrote:

Haha, that’s fine too. Do you know if the higher difficulty settings grant more credits for upgrades, or is it similar to the easier settings?[/quote:17zpe6ce]
Yes, the higher difficulty settings grant you more credits for upgrades

[linus]

I don’t know if this was intentional but it seems like playing the first mission repeatedly seems to net the most credits for time/effort spent.

Playing an endless mode usually results in ~150-250 Credits, which is great, less the fact that it requires more work than just tapping and placing one miner.

Playing the first mission usually takes me less than a minute and can churn out about 300 Credits in about 10-15 minutes. Annoying as heck, but can be done.

[Paul]

Credits won for finishing a mission are reduced after you have done it the first time. Like you say though it is possible to repeat short missions, so maybe this reduction should be made slightly larger.

You can earn that many credits doing well on a high difficulty setting too though in roughly the same time so I don’t see it as being too imbalanced.

[frostilicus]

Or, instead of making the reduction larger, you could implement a formula for the reduction.
That way, doing the same mission a second time will net you, say, 1/2 the normal amount of credits, but the fifth or so time you do it, you get, for instance, a tenth.

[Paul]

"frostilicus":qaaw106s wrote:

Or, instead of making the reduction larger, you could implement a formula for the reduction.
That way, doing the same mission a second time will net you, say, 1/2 the normal amount of credits, but the fifth or so time you do it, you get, for instance, a tenth.[/quote:qaaw106s]
Indeed, although after quite a lot of thought, people will not appreciate a decrease in credits as we have already had a few complaints of the ‘grind’ being too much in this game. So it is going to stay like it is.

There was never meant to be a lot of grind, it was designed so that with a good choice of shipyard purchases and good strategy, only a few extra survival and mining mode games are required to finish the campaign.

[linus]

Honestly, I think it’s fine. There is more "grunt work" required with playing the tutorial over and over again. This is compared to playing the endless games that require thought and strategy.

[Author]

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