To kick this off I’m going to start with the most basic, but also the most important part of the game:
Formations.
There are 11 formations available, 4 offensive, 5 defensive and 2 support formations, which I split into active and passive formations.
Active formations are the ones actually fighting for you, they either hit and destroy enemy bots or shield passive bots against incoming damage on contact, these are the formations you launch en masse.
Offensive formations:
All offensive formations are also active formations, since they all aim to destroy as many enemy bots as possible.
-You’ve got the weak but sturdy Zone Assault (short: ZA), who offer the best shields of their class while being the most effective free formation against Seekers,
-The devastating Shockwave formation (SW), which is the second strongest formation in the game in means of attack strength, even though they’re weak against Seekers,
-The sneaky Plasma Beam (Plasma), which will deal good damage without leaving a trace of you in the zone (only energy is launched into the zone, so there are no surviving bots to give your presence away), but requiring a 500 credits ordnance for every single launch
-And last but not least the Nanomissile (Nano), being the most expensive offensive formation (1.000 credits/launch), but also the strongest in the game with the longest range (400 miles).
The payed offensive formations deal a lot of extra damage to Seekers.
Defensive formations:
Unlike offensive formations, there is only one defensive formation that deals damage, and even that one only deals damage to offensive bots or bots of their kind (seekers). All the other formations won’t kill a single bot when you launch them into a zone, but they’re hard to destroy and will set a solid base for you to hold a zone. There are 3 active and 2 passive defensive formations. Lets start with the active ones:
-Deflection (Def) launches are the backbone of every fortified zone. If you are a casual player without millions on your credits account, this is what you’ll want to stack in your zones. While being the active formation with the second strongest shield in the game, they’ll deal absolutely no damage to any bot in the zone you launch them into. They are defenders, and defenders only, against any kind of offensive formation. If there are enemy offensive bots left in the zone you want to take over, and you launch deflection, you’ll loose most of the deflection bots you launched.
-Seekers, on the other hand, are a compromise between offense and defense. They’re incredibly strong defenders against Shockwave and enemy seekers, and good attackers against enemy offensive bots in a zone. Keep in mind that they won’t attack any defensive formation except other seekers, not even if your enemy launches Deflection bots into your zone, and that they’re extremely vulnerable against Nanomissiles and Plasma Beams.
-Now we’ve reached the last active formation: Absorbers (ABS). Absorbers are the most expensive active formation (2.000 credits/deploy), but they’re also the strongest defenders in the game. This formation is so incredibly hard to kill at it’s base stats, that the max shield boost you can put on them is caped at 50%, instead of 100% for every other bot. This formation has no big weaknesses, a high survival rate even if the enemy still has offensive bots in the zone you launch them into and the highest number of bots per deploy among all active formations, in short, it’s designed to defend high value positions and beachheads.
Let’s continue with the passive formations. Passive formations are working in the background, supporting their active counterparts by boosting their stats or hiding them from the enemy. They might be expensive, but they can easily tip the scales to your benefit.
As mentioned above, there are 2 passive formations among the defensive formations.
-The first one is called Hardened Lattice (HL). These bots will boost the shields of a limited number of bots above them instantly by 100%. The effect gets weaker, the more bots you stack above them. They’re intended to enable you to hold and build a small zone or beachhead against enemy resistance, and they’re very good at achieving that goal.
-The second one is the Divert formation. These bots will simply hide your bots in a zone and make bots of other players of your fraction look more dangerous. This formation only works if you’ve got at least one teammate, since it wont keep enemy bots from hitting you, it just makes the enemy bots hit other players of your fraction first. This is useful if you’re using support formations, boosting the damage/shields of all players of your fraction, while your allies stack Deflection/Absorbers.
Support formations:
The last class of formations are the support bots
This class has only two formations, both of them passive. If your scope is fully upgraded, both formations will have a survival rate of 100%, meaning they’ll simply ignore enemy offensive bots trying to block their way into the zone. After they’re deployed they can be hit and destroyed, though, so make sure they’re defended before you launch them.
-The first support bots are Bot Boosters. They’ll boost the attacks of every player of your fraction in the zone they’re in. Every launch (5.000 bots after you completed training at lvl 100) boosts your fractions attacks by 12.5%, maxing out at 100% (40.000 bots)
-The second one are called Strengthen. They’ll boost the shields of every player of your fraction in the zone they’re in. Every launch (5.000 bots after you completed training at lvl 100) boosts your fractions shields by 12.5%, maxing out at 100% (40.000 bots).
Both support formations are very expensive, so be careful when you use them, and don’t even think about using them before being done with your scope upgrades, since you won’t get the full offense/defense bonus without maxing out the enhancer upgrades and they’re very expensive.
Thanks for reading, hope you can use these informations.
Stay tuned for further information or shoot me a message via wire/GroupMe
See you on the battlefield
Yours
Schneewolf