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Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

By popular demand from the Clash of Clans thread (i.e. many people saying "that's great stop talking about Boom Beach in the Clash thread") here is a very half-assed OP about Boom Beach!

Boom Beach is the latest crowdsourced pyramid scheme created by Supercell. Like Clash of Clans, it is designed to grift money from unwary people whilst they poop. Also, I like bolding words.

:siren: Boom Beach Clans Task Forces Are Now Active!!! :siren:

Goon Task Force List

Goonfleet
#2QLQ0G

Boat Pirates
#80UR2J9

Patton's Heroes
#2GRP90R

2legit2lift
#RL929LO

Useful Resources

This is a way better OP than mine: Stickyrice3's Ultimate Guide to Boom Beach. Read it if you're totally new to Boom Beach.

Here's a good resource site with a good wiki: Boom Beach HQ

Here's a good starter guide from the same place: Boom Beach HQ Beginner Guide

This is a good explanation of how to use Warriors, which you get at HQ8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rNnM9kDno0

A handy guide on power stones: Yesup's Guide to Power Stones and Statues

Zila's Huge Effortpost That Is More Relevant Now Than Ever So Read It

Zila posted:

My take on this game has always been to pump offense and mostly ignore defense. You don't get shields or any way of stopping people from attacking you so there is always the possibility of getting chain raided. I like to raid for upgrades and then stop while refreshing pvp bases for good loot and clearing out the npc spawns as soon as possible for crystals and more spawns in between upgrade sessions.

I just leveled to 37 and was able to clear up to 13 on the new dr terror which got me enough to start HQ 17 and barrage 9. I regularly kill 41-44 on my map even with triple BC and SL. Maybe one of the higher level players can throw some more in.

:effort:
For an Offensive Player:

Always upgrade your HQ as soon as possible, there is no penalty for upgrading and it opens up new troops, gun boat abilities, LC/GB/armory level.

Keep your armory as high as it can be for your HQ, I prioritize artillery -> barrage -> main troop type for upgrades. Throw in shock, heal, smoke, flare if you can but once you get to 15/20 sec of flare you only really need higher for TF maps.

Upgrade Priority

HQ -> armory -> gunboat -> vault -> LC (can lag behind if an upgrade wont give you 1 more troop)

Throw in storage/resource upgrades if you need something cheap to do. I usually look at the resource cost of the next HQ level and upgrade my storages to meet that.

Low level buildings are a good quick way of getting experience if you are close to leveling up to get the next HQ upgrade.

Main Troop Combinations


Rifleman Rush: Produced quickly for cheap and lets you attack while making more.
Good for taking out single target buildings. Weak vs any high damage aoe, rockets and mortars. Target rockets and then mortars with artillery/barrage and medkits for flamethrowers and machine guns.

Riflemen, Zooka, Medic (RzM): Same as above but adding more dps from zookas, just don't let a stray mcg or splash aoe pick them apart.

Heavy & Zooka (Hooka): Beefy heavies to absorb the damage while your zookas kill from behind. Weak to rockets because the heavies sit in the dead zone and they will target your zookas. You can either art/barrage the rockets or another strategy is to art/barrage boom cannons then shock the rockets when your guys start to kill them.

Heavy, Zooka, Medic (HzM): Same as above but you trade one LC for medics to give you some sustaining power.

Smokey Warrior Rush: High damage with decent hp allows them to sit on the HQ for a few seconds. This is doable when you first get warriors at lower level, just flare straight to the HQ and shock anything in your path. Really shines once you get smoke to cover your path. Flare/smoke to the HQ and medkit/shock when smoke drops for a 20 sec win or loss if you didn't plan it right. If you have decent GBE you can art/barrage to clear out defenses by the HQ to make it easier.

Tank & Medic (Tmed): Combine a heavy and a zooka to make a tank, only they get destroyed by cannons/boom cannons/boom mines so make sure you art/barrage BC first and then cannons along your way as you get more GBE. Medics are nice for helping sustain snipers/rockets/mortars because tanks kill pretty slowly. If you are decent with controlling where they go you can chain bases by not losing any tanks, but if you lose a tank you take a big hit and have to wait 30mins to an hour if you have double tank LCs.


I would suggest either hooka/HzM or Tmed as both are pretty strong if you know how to play to their strengths and target their weaknesses with artillery. There have also been some people that have gotten very high with just pure smokey warriors.

Statues:

Red:
Troop damage MP and 1 or 2 extra troop damage guardians
Troop health MP
Purple:
Gun boat damage MP and 1 or 2 extra guardians
Resource Reward MP
Power stone Chance MP
Blue:
Building health MP (can remove this at lower levels if you don't have a high sculptor)

Green:
Nothing

Starting-ish Advice Of Varying Usefulness

  • Upgrading your HQ immediately unlocks whatever it says it will, which can include new Gunboat weapons, new troop types, new structures, and also governs the maximum level of your other buildings. Thus, rushing your HQ is not only a good idea in Boom Beach, but it accelerates your progress immensely.

  • Your human opponents are chosen by how many victory points you have; your HQ level is unrelated. This is why if you want victory points, it's even better to rush your HQ to get more tools with which to boom on beaches.

  • New and want to get strong fast? Focus on upgrading all Landing Craft (LC) to 12/16/20 slots (level 8/12/16) asap so that you can hold multiples of commonly used units (level 12, which is 16 slots, lets you field two tanks per boat which is huge) along with your Armory for reasons listed a few points down. This enables you to raid via overpowering your opponents so you can rocket up in the VP, and thus loot.

  • Major offensive HQ upgrades include HQ8 for Warriors, HQ11 for tanks, HQ14 for smoke (which opens up all kinds of tactics when you can effectively shield stuff for 9+ seconds, though you can't attack), and HQ15 for medics.

  • Defensively speaking, don't worry about it. Upgrade defenses when you can, but focus more on raiding/actually fighting better with your troops since you control them via flares.

  • Armory upgrades give you huge amounts of XP, and the Artillery and Barrage upgrades are very important to successful raiding. Being able to shatter a Boom Cannon or a Rocket in 2-3 instead of 3-4 shots is huge when you start dealing with larger bases where you have to think through how to pass their layered defenses.

  • Armory upgrades are also EXTREMELY important for raiding, but don't spread yourself thin; try to focus on 1-2 troop types, artillery, and barrage. Fill in gaps as you feel you need, but focus on getting some upgraded troops.

  • In response to, "Are the resources in my collectors (Residences, Sawmill, Quarry, Iron Mine) safe when I am raided? What about my loot boats?"

    Bellmeistr posted:

    Resource base and reward boats are safe. Your collectors in your base are not.

  • You can determine exactly how much of your resources are at-risk by clicking on the resource counter in the top-right. This is also where you find out your resource-production-per-hour overall, and from what sources.

  • Upgrading your Residences should be a high-ish priority. They cover you on gold recovery if you fail raids so you can rebuild your army, and they fuel your ability to attack.

  • Scout out enemy bases ahead of time because it's free, and if you click on enemy defenses, you can see their exact fields of fire, HP, and damage (along with modifiers from statues).

  • Use Scouting to identify which key defensive structures you should shell from your Gunboat before you either flank the enemy base entirely if there's an open path you can Flare around, or a specific point you can Flare to have your units move there and attack remaining structures before they focus on the HQ. Flares allow you to wreck bases.

  • Power Crystals/Statues: The green statues are far and away the weakest. Build and reclaim all of them; there is never a better green statue than purple or red if your goal is advancing within the game via raiding, which it essentially MUST be due to half of your bases being PVP bases at any given time. Read Cryohazard's quote below for additional info on statues.

  • Diamonds (the real money/random-in-game-drop resource) are really the only form of "more" builders by letting you instantly finish production time. Yes, you only have 1 builder, but similar to Clash, you can get gems from achievements to 'save' for a builder in that you pick the times you want to instantly build. You also get Diamonds from daily rewards, task force operation rewards and submarine dives, and I forget what else.

Additional Information

Excellent summary of Crystals and general gameplay courtesy of Cryohazard:

Cryohazard posted:

Green ones aren't very good in general. The other colors all have really powerful bonuses, though. Reds are especially great and have the potential to buff your troops massively but you can only have one masterpiece per statue type, so that's one for attack and one for HP, and you have lots of free slots after that to spam the mid-tier sculptures in empty slots. Blue are the hardest to get but are incredibly annoying and a great deterrent- having ~+30% health on all your buildings makes assaulting your base a loving nightmare- and "dark" masterpieces have the potential to be amazingly useful in a quality of life manner rather than power. I've got one that gives +32% to all resource rewards from raids which I personally love, but is probably the worst of the dark types. There's one that pumps your gunboat energy up, which is great, and one that improves the chance of crystal drops. Powder that before taking down a Hammerman base, preferably accompanied by liberal Dr Terror raids.

First tip, upgrading your sculptor is stupidly expensive but pays off massively even by adding a single mid-tier red to your collection. Don't neglect it.

Second tip, don't be fooled into keeping green masterpieces around. They really, really suck compared to the other colors, and a mid-tier red, or blue +HP, or any dark is going to serve you better.

Third tip, scrapping a masterpiece is worth 7 powder, powder is amazing and is there to be used, grind up those green statues, sprinkle fairy dust everywhere before a big resource push.



Also, how players are getting past level 36 without space for 12 tanks is frankly baffling to me, that poo poo needs to be your priority!

If you find it dramatically harder to get resources post-Task-Force patch, this is 100% not mandatory but it works for jm20 and I think a few other players use it:

jm20 posted:

I will let you in on the new secrets of money. They have ruined the economy, it's goddamn stupid, but there are ways to get money. You will need a moderately full map, and a calculator to start. First we will upgrade something about halfway the cost of your high gold research which you really want. It needs to be about 3 days in duration or this wont work.

Upgrade your halfway research Wednesday night . You might ask, why am I upgrading something I might not want right now instead of trying to save for the big one? Why Wednesday? Short answer: you can't anymore, there are not enough bases, and Wednesdays are special. Ok we have something upgrading for 3 days great. Start cycling pvp bases to get better gold payouts.

You need to have a fuller map with enough PVP bases on Friday, just before the research completes. Ideally you will get both an OP and VP reward with gold as well, even one should be fine. You need to start with just under the threshold where people steal your junk. Boost your RR statues, we're going on a bender.

You have 50% of that halfway research in gold 'banked', you will lose 50% of your initial research gold and the opportunity cost, but it's the only way currently. Use a calculator (excel) right now to determine if you can wipe all your bases, dr terror, and your vp/op reward boats to make your goal. If you can't then let your research lapse and retry next wednesday. If this works you are now spending 5m+ gold using the 50% protected gold bank.

Tanks 10 started, my pvp gold bases were 171k/135k/115k/90k and got shittier from there. RR statues are super important now it seems, we should probably double up on them.

Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Jun 19, 2015

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Putty
Mar 21, 2013

HOOKED ON THE BROTHERS
10/10 epic op would read again

I just unlocked warriors how do I win with them.

Risky Bisquick
Jan 18, 2008

PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.



Buglord

Putty posted:

10/10 epic op would read again

I just unlocked warriors how do I win with them.

Deploy them against legions of cannons without using smoke

ranbo das
Oct 16, 2013


I got attacked by someone with almost 100 more victory points than me, I dunno if he just got me on his map when he was around my level and waited to attack me or what.

Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

Putty posted:

10/10 epic op would read again

I just unlocked warriors how do I win with them.

You can actually flare into the jungles around bases; at that level, most HQs cannot clearcut their jungles, so you can flare ANYWHERE on the map, including behind trees so that your warriors rush in.

Since most people are bad at laying out bases, this means you'll see bases where you can artillery 1-2 key defenses, then flare your warriors around the base to flank HQ.

Flares are awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rNnM9kDno0

That video explains Warriors overall, including how to shock bomb and medkit through bases. At 4 minutes it specifically talks about flares. Flare-flankable bases happe less as you level, but there are lots of bases like that at a low level and many people (correctly) estimate that most people fail to position well with flares and/or shockbomb properly.

Boom mines can be triggered with a direct Artillery shot before you get Barrage if they're in a choke point you need to flare past. You can also select mines while Scouting to confirm their damage; most are shrugged off by warriors, and if you can let them wail on some econ buildings, they'll heal up the mine damage to boot.

Similarly, at lower levels when you just get Warriors, if you can engage defenses one or a few at a time, your warriors can burn them down before they die. Gunboat upgrades for energy help a lot, and (in general) max your artillery ASAP. I almost always artillery/barrage cannons so that warriors can get to stuff like sniper nests.

Machine guns DESTROY warriors. Do not engage a machine gun while mortars rain on you if you aren't shock bombing the MG. MG damage increases the closer the target is, so warriors eat more damage from MGs than any other unit.

Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Jul 20, 2014

ephphatha
Dec 18, 2009




Go absolutely nuts spending diamonds, but if you haven't hit HQ 10 yet try to save around 150 diamonds to buy missing resources for the HQ upgrades. HQ 5>6 needs stone but you don't get a quarry until after you upgrade, and you need stone to build the stone storage high enough to even hold the quantity required to upgrade your HQ. ~40 diamonds will buy you the missing resources. HQ 9>10 needs iron, and again you don't get a mine until after the upgrade and your storage is insufficient to hold the quantity required for the HQ upgrade. This one costs around 80 diamonds.

Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

Diamonds to rush HQ resources is good when you're just a little bit short of a resource. I'm not so sure about spending them willy-nill, though, in this sense:

Diamonds cost much more per minute rushed the less time something takes to build. For example, right now my armory is researching an artillery upgrade that will take 15 hours 22 minutes costing 156 diamonds to upgrade (156 / 922 minutes = ~.17 diamonds per minute spent) versus a canon upgrade that will take 4 hours 15 minutes costing 56 diamonds to rush (56 diamonds / 255 minutes = ~.22 diamonds per minute spent).

This is a deceptively larger difference than would otherwise appear because .05 diamonds per minute means that you end up spending anywhere from 10-40% more diamonds than you otherwise would if you spend them on small sub-8-hour upgrades. Using just the example above of 15 and 4 hours, you'd be paying an extra ~29% diamonds by rushing at the lower 4-hour rate than at the 15 hour rate. Conversely: gently caress it, spend em anyway.

This also means that if you stockpile resources, you can upgrade HQ with what you have on hand/spending a few diamonds to initiate the upgrade if need be > rush it (getting a lot more ~diamond efficiency~) > immediately start building something that rushed HQ unlocked, leaving less resources at risk.

Also, I should probably note in the OP that choosing to Instant Upgrade something seems to force you to pay diamonds for the resources even if you have them, which would mean you never want to instant upgrade, you always want to manually upgrade then rush with diamonds; can anyone confirm?

Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Jul 20, 2014

waffles beyond waffles
Jun 22, 2008

Oh, what a day...
What a lovely day!
Instant upgrades do not cost any resources.

Fushigi Yuugi fansub
Jan 20, 2007

BUTT STUFF

S.T.C.A. posted:


[*]Rushing your HQ is not only a good idea in Boom, but it accelerates your progress immensely. Upgrading your HQ immediately unlocks whatever it says it will, which can include new Gunboat weapons, new troop types, new structures, and also governs the maximum level of your other buildings.

this advice right here is loving stupid and retarded hth

Fushigi Yuugi fansub fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Jul 20, 2014

Cryohazard
Feb 5, 2010

Nauta posted:

this advice right here is loving stupid and retarded hth

It's actually really good advice but past HQ10 or so it's no longer practical because you actually need to hang on to your resources for more than 5 minutes to go further.

Bellmeistr
Jul 2, 2007
Upgrading your hq as fast as possible is solid advice. There's no reason to max your upgrades before going up in hq and it will make the game frustrating and boring as hell.

Also, the op in this thread is incredibly helpful in regards to power stones: http://forum.supercell.net/showthread.php/219660-yesup-s-Ultimate-Guide-to-Power-Stones-and-Statues

Bellmeistr fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Jul 20, 2014

Risky Bisquick
Jan 18, 2008

PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.



Buglord
So I'm HQ9, L20, VP129. I need to drop VP by not attacking and thats fine because I nearly never need resources outside of iron or to top up gold for big upgrades. The game is pretty boring in that it promotes doing absolutely nothing but waiting to build new structures at low HQ when you have a max economy and own basically all the resource bases that are worth more than 240 wood or 120 stone. I have enough upgrades that do not need iron to take me to probably L25.

Rushing my base so far has included maxing economy, storages, landing craft and your support buildings. At what point will I be required to start putting effort into my defenses to advance? My L3 sniper towers and L1 rest are thus far pretty scary defending nothing at my current VP range, rarely producing gems on defense.

I've got some lovely statues but have troop health 18%, and damage 5%.

I'm still not sure I like the game.

Bellmeistr
Jul 2, 2007
I'm hq 16, lvl 40, with 420 or so vps. Once you get to a certain lvl, upgrades start costing way more than you can safely hold. That's when you'll start getting owned by tmeds (tanks+meds), hookas (heavies+zookas), or a good old fashioned warrior rush. It's hard to keep your vps low at that point because you'll need to attack players to get enough resources for an upgrade, you'll never farm them fast enough without getting attacked and plundered. And without a shielding system, you can be attacked 3 times in a row and lose essentially everything your vault isn't protecting.

That's one thing I found off putting about the game. Aside from upping your defenses and keeping low resources, there's no reliable way to not get attacked like in coc. When a player appears on your map, their resource reward is locked in, so even though you might currently have less resources than your vault can hold, you'll still get attacked because you opponent might have been matched to you when you were saving for an upgrade and they just waited to attack you. It just makes the whole match making process seem very random.

Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

ranbo das posted:

I got attacked by someone with almost 100 more victory points than me, I dunno if he just got me on his map when he was around my level and waited to attack me or what.

Bellmeistr posted:

It just makes the whole match making process seem very random.

Thinking about it, I have a dude whose base showed up like 2-3 HQ levels ago (for me); at this point, I still won't attack for a while because his saved resource amount is huge, and I won't Find New until I explode him for loots. I'm 70 vp above him, and I'll probably be about a hundred past him by the time I can crack his base. That's indeed a strange matchmaking system that rewards dumping resources as quick as you can.

vulturesrow
Sep 25, 2011

Always gotta pay it forward.

S.T.C.A. posted:

Thinking about it, I have a dude whose base showed up like 2-3 HQ levels ago (for me); at this point, I still won't attack for a while because his saved resource amount is huge, and I won't Find New until I explode him for loots. I'm 70 vp above him, and I'll probably be about a hundred past him by the time I can crack his base. That's indeed a strange matchmaking system that rewards dumping resources as quick as you can.

Pretty sure that the system is based mostly or solely on VP.

Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

vulturesrow posted:

Pretty sure that the system is based mostly or solely on VP.

Right, I think so also; I just think that since the initial match is based on VP while the actual time a person attacks can be weeks later (when the VP difference can be huge) the player perception of matchmaking (in general) would be negatively affected by that delay.

That delay between initial match > actual attack is also incentivized by the game because a high reward base that I know I can roll over is something I'm going to leave active on my radar until I actually need the resources, which can lead to examples like ranbo das described; by the time I attack some of the bases on my radar, they're going to see a dude 50-100+ VP higher than them attacking even though we were roughly equal when we were paired days/weeks ago.

e: the comment about it rewarding resource dumping refers to how if you go full :spergin: optimal playing :spergin: you want to raid easy bases for resources > start an upgrade that leaves you with none or minimal at-risk resources > be done until you want to upgrade again, then repeat; that way, it doesn't matter how long someone takes to attack you, you minimize the resources you actually have at risk, even if they were matched against you while you had a huge amount of resources at risk, if all my ridiculous statements make any sense

Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jul 21, 2014

Total Confusion
Oct 9, 2004
I keep losing my resource bases and now it's at a point that my troops aren't strong enough to retake them :qq:

Risky Bisquick
Jan 18, 2008

PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.



Buglord

Gold and a Pager posted:

I keep losing my resource bases and now it's at a point that my troops aren't strong enough to retake them :qq:

You can't really hold them all, try to hold onto the higher output ones as you need to hold less of them in comparison to the 120 wood ones. I'm lucky in that people don't bother my stone RB often, and the ones I don't own I simply cannot even attempt to take.


HQ10 or just before seems to be the area where you have to start raiding to get enough resources to get things done. Armory upgrades start getting prohibitively expensive gold wise, and I simply cannot have enough wood right now. I will probably have to wait until wednesday to upgrade to HQ10 as all the people I see at 130VP are HQ11-12 and way out of my attackable bracket.

Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

jm20 posted:

HQ10 or just before seems to be the area where you have to start raiding to get enough resources to get things done. Armory upgrades start getting prohibitively expensive gold wise, and I simply cannot have enough wood right now. I will probably have to wait until wednesday to upgrade to HQ10 as all the people I see at 130VP are HQ11-12 and way out of my attackable bracket.

Are you still rocking only warriors? Because while they're awesome, there are still some bases that hookas or heavy rifles can crack because they can stand out of fields of fire, depending on defense positions.

I had to switch up my armies a lot once I had warriors because there were lots of bases that warriors failed against, but mass rifles with or without heavies and hookas carried me to tanks whenever I had no warrior-capable bases, and once all the rifle bases fell I'd switch back to warriors or hookas and repeat as needed. The fact that you can swap units and get a refund makes it all the easier.

Oh duh: max your sawmill if you haven't, the resource generation is nuts. what are you upgrading that's hoovering your wood, anyway?

Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jul 22, 2014

Fushigi Yuugi fansub
Jan 20, 2007

BUTT STUFF
i'd guess landing crafts, support boat (or whatever), statue building, armory, etc.

Risky Bisquick
Jan 18, 2008

PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.



Buglord

S.T.C.A. posted:

Are you still rocking only warriors? Because while they're awesome, there are still some bases that hookas or heavy rifles can crack because they can stand out of fields of fire, depending on defense positions.

I had to switch up my armies a lot once I had warriors because there were lots of bases that warriors failed against, but mass rifles with or without heavies and hookas carried me to tanks whenever I had no warrior-capable bases, and once all the rifle bases fell I'd switch back to warriors or hookas and repeat as needed. The fact that you can swap units and get a refund makes it all the easier.

Oh duh: max your sawmill if you haven't, the resource generation is nuts. what are you upgrading that's hoovering your wood, anyway?

I use hooka, with 12/12/12/11/10, or warriors sometimes with my 18% hp statues. I max economy as a priority, then move onto army. Though it's the landing crafts that rape my wood, they always want 30k+ for 3 hours of work. I guess I'm doing myself no favours by doing the crafts back to back.

Also I hit HQ10, time to max my economy buildings again.

edit: I just stole some suckas 580 wood, and I have a 15% wood statue so this might help a bit

Risky Bisquick fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jul 23, 2014

Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

Yeah they're super expensive. I only have 1 craft at 14, rest at 10, and at the point you were at I had all of them at 9 for max warriors or two heavies per craft; that's exactly why I was asking, because craft get super expensive but you can only hold so many troops.

All my craft hold only 1 tank right now, so I'm only upgrading that single craft to 16 to hold 2 tanks; I only ever went from 9-10 slots because I a had spare resources to dump, otherwise my highest slotted craft carried 3 heavies/4 warriors and the rest were loaded with as many rifles or zookas or 3 warriors. Saved me wood to focus on other stuff,cause my defenses are still so low most (except mortars) take less than 100k wood for upgrades. I do still get rolled but at least get gems for killing units.

waffles beyond waffles
Jun 22, 2008

Oh, what a day...
What a lovely day!
I unlocked tanks a couple days ago. They're effective but expensive if one or more gets destroyed. They will roll through any base without much worry if you snipe the cannons with the gun ship. Kinda made the game fun again.

They have so much health that the health pack will never heal them to full. Shock bombs on the snipers and mortars work well enough if my tanks get beat up. They outrange machine guns and flamers.

Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

Yeah shockbombs on things dangerous to tanks are awesome.

If I were less lazy, I'd record a few of my raids because I can't find any good flare videos, and flares seriously wreck bases early (if not forever) to the point that tanks don't really get lost, especially if you flare-shuffle against sniper nests (flare a foot behind a full HP tank so that tank runs to the flare then turns to fight while the wounded tanks, slightly farther away, have to go to the flare).

Also flares can be shot next to buildings without targeting the building (e.g. you can move next to mortars/outside of cannon fields by hugging huts or whatever without having tanks stand far away and shoot).

E: Also I'm 99% sure tanks only outrange flamers

Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Jul 23, 2014

waffles beyond waffles
Jun 22, 2008

Oh, what a day...
What a lovely day!
Probably true, but MGs don't do poo poo to them. Beyond the obvious cannon and boom cannon the only thing I worry about is snipers. Mortars can add up too.

Risky Bisquick
Jan 18, 2008

PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.



Buglord
So I got a green masterpiece, it was something stupid like 33% Iron Production bonus so I dumped it. Looking at the crafting super guide it was a common and useless one so I rightfully dumped it. I rejigged my statues so I have +7/7/11 troop health, +15% wood production bonus, and finally a +8% resource reward. Statues reclaimed were troop damage 5% and stone production 10% and iron production 33%. I figure the troop health boosts will reduce casualties and actually cut the reinforcement gold costs by having tougher units.

I am perpetually wood poor right now, and consistently staying in the 120-130VP range by attacking the bare minimum. The only thing I make a point of is clearing out all the ice bases as soon as possible. While I will most definitely not be making ice statues anytime soon I want to build a large volume of stones for when I would need to, which seems like a logical decision.

waffles beyond waffles
Jun 22, 2008

Oh, what a day...
What a lovely day!
Tanks are a huge upgrade. I've retaken all my resource bases without losing a tank, and can roll (slowly) through the under level 20 players on my map. The only downside is they are very expensive, meaning if I do lose one on an attack then its likely a loss. Looking forward to getting medics.

I've been trading a wood resource base with a player for a few weeks now, and its amazing how bad he is. It has a rocket for defense, and he's lost scores of zookas by flaring his heavies into the minimum range of it. :downs:

waffles beyond waffles
Jun 22, 2008

Oh, what a day...
What a lovely day!


Any advice? I have level one tanks currently. Warriors maybe? I don't have smoke yet.

Nosre
Apr 16, 2002


gromdul posted:



Any advice? I have level one tanks currently. Warriors maybe? I don't have smoke yet.

I would Heavy + zooka it. Heavies can tank rockets and machine guns all day. Kill one rocket launcher up top with your boat, then put down your heavies and kill one of the bottom rockets. He's got almost nothing protecting those so you can walk the heavies in right next to it and kill the thing without taking much damage. Then get the zookas down and maneuver everything up, tanking the other rockets with heals and shocks.

Now, I don't know if your troop levels are high enough to do this; but it's definitely a good strat to take out those rocket bases, especially with a bad setup like that.

Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

gromdul posted:

Any advice? I have level one tanks currently. Warriors maybe? I don't have smoke yet.



I'd just use those five tanks. I'm using L1s as well. Just have them roll up to the one on the bottom-right first (deploy to the right of the black line), kill the MG and rocket normally, then flare the ground between the two top-right rockets (twice if need be, you want the tanks to hug where I circled so they have max range on the HQ). It may say "Invalid target for weapon" but just make sure you click inside the map area, riiiight on the edge.

You're ignoring the MG fire on the way. They have the HP to eat MGs as they bumrush those rockets. Those are low-level MGs so your tanks will shred the rockets first (cause they're closest) then shred those low level MGs, then the HQ. You don't have to flare anymore once they're in that circle area or close to it. Don't be afraid to use medkits on Tanks, either; medkits still heal tanks same as heavies, tanks just have shitloads of HP. Yes, you will be eating rocket fire the entire time.

Disclaimer: I got really lucky on my Magma Guardians so my tanks have like +22% HP and +10% damage right now, so my L1 tanks do a handy 500 damage a shot with something like 2800 hp each. Tanks are tanky and do good damage, but still retreat if positioning is bad to preserve the tanks if need be.

Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Jul 27, 2014

RennZero
Oct 10, 2007

"Get in."
Whoa, I own a resource base with those exact same buildings... Are the resource base defenses randomly generated or is there a list of presets that they build from?

That would be really weird if that was the actual base that I own now! The buildings were even laid out like that when I first took it.

Edit: Here is a pic of the base as I have it laid out now

RennZero fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Jul 27, 2014

ephphatha
Dec 18, 2009




I think the resource bases have a preset layout until a player captures them and rearranges the defenses. When I was taking that base I just used warriors, I dropped artillery on the machine guns near the HQ and let the warriors run up the right hand side taking out all the rockets until only the bottom left one remained, then they wailed on the HQ while tanking the last barrage.

RennZero
Oct 10, 2007

"Get in."
Ah ok, probably not the same base then. I think I used warriors on it too.

Tempora Mutantur
Feb 22, 2005

Tanks with riflemen aren't too awful.

Tempora Mutantur fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Sep 26, 2014

Risky Bisquick
Jan 18, 2008

PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.



Buglord

RennZero posted:

Whoa, I own a resource base with those exact same buildings... Are the resource base defenses randomly generated or is there a list of presets that they build from?

That would be really weird if that was the actual base that I own now! The buildings were even laid out like that when I first took it.

Edit: Here is a pic of the base as I have it laid out now


I just did this with 5 tanks with +25% hp for no losses. I had a scare but flared the damaged tanks away from the leftover launchers.

This also means im now HQ11 which ain't bad. I havent gotten gems in a while defending let alone a defense but it's worked out ok this far. Ill need to work on defenses at HQ 12 or 16 but I haven't decided yet.

Philosopher King
Oct 25, 2006
So do we know if there is a loot penalty in this game for attacking a lower base or am I just better off sandbagging my score and decimating lowbies when I need to seriously upgrade?

Nosre
Apr 16, 2002


I'm 99% sure I read advice on SA to never attack the little NPC bases, cause doing so raises your Victory Points and matches you up with tougher opponents. Maybe it was in the CoC thread before this split off?

Anyway, I started doing that about a week ago and think I disagree with it. Invasions (new bases spawning) have slowed to a trickle, and as a result I'm rapidly running out of human targets. I've completely clearcut a whole quarter of my map:



There's 11 human bases on the rest of it, but half of those are either high level (and also have great loot, so I'm saving them until I can take them) or have particular resource layouts (like one guy with a massive amount of stone) that I save for when I need them.

Anyone else have a similar experience or idea about these mechanics?

Bellmeistr
Jul 2, 2007

Nosre posted:

I'm 99% sure I read advice on SA to never attack the little NPC bases, cause doing so raises your Victory Points and matches you up with tougher opponents. Maybe it was in the CoC thread before this split off?

Anyway, I started doing that about a week ago and think I disagree with it. Invasions (new bases spawning) have slowed to a trickle, and as a result I'm rapidly running out of human targets. I've completely clearcut a whole quarter of my map:



There's 11 human bases on the rest of it, but half of those are either high level (and also have great loot, so I'm saving them until I can take them) or have particular resource layouts (like one guy with a massive amount of stone) that I save for when I need them.

Anyone else have a similar experience or idea about these mechanics?

I stopped attacking NPC bases awhile ago (HQ 16) since they got tough as poo poo and most of the time give terrible rewards for the potential losses. This is just what I've observed, but I believe your map has a certain amount of NPC and human bases allowed on it, independent of eachother, so if you clear an NPC base it replaces it with another NPC base, not a human. That may be wrong, but it has seemed that way to me for awhile.

Risky Bisquick
Jan 18, 2008

PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.



Buglord

Philosopher King posted:

So do we know if there is a loot penalty in this game for attacking a lower base or am I just better off sandbagging my score and decimating lowbies when I need to seriously upgrade?

There are no penalities. The way it works is when someone presses 'Next Opponent', it snapshots their lootable resources. So if you attack the base at anytime you will steal the snapshotted quantity of resources whether or not the target has them available at the time of attack. So stolen resources and resources lost can be totally different numbers entirely. If you find a target with a large quantity of resources it might be better to leave it until you can attack it for resources.

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waffles beyond waffles
Jun 22, 2008

Oh, what a day...
What a lovely day!
I used 5 tanks to take that missile resource base. It went smoothly; I may have lost a tank.

I hit level 27 but I don't have anywhere near the amount of resources to upgrade my HQ. I even lacked the wood storage. So I upgraded that. I will probably just gem it, but I think I'll take a break for a day and let my collectors gather some of it.

I need to upgrade my landing craft so I can put 3 warriors on each. Until then tanks are a lot of fun.

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