Kaboom!

Easiest how-to ever, save your R and unlock Nukes. The end.

But seriously, what do you do when everyone just makes a nuke fleet? You want your’s to be better, so here are some tips for optimizing an already good faction.

When you start-out, your biggest problem is that everything is fucking expensive. It takes forever to save enough to unlock the good weapons. You’ll have to make do with flurry missiles and plasma bolts for a while. Hang around the farmers and try to find a patch of seeds so you can suck-up quick R. Unlock a factory first so you can have some allies to protect you. You just want a small fleet you help you out – don’t try building big yet. Do your best not to die and cash-in those Resources for Credits.

Plasma Bolts:

Don’t waste credits on the Annihilators because Plasma Bolts are arguably better. Four Plasma Bolts have the same range, do comparable damage, and if you add up the slash effects – there’s really no reason to have the Anihilators. Four guns can also shoot more enemies than one gun can, AND these are your point-defense weapons. So go ahead and load-up on plasma bolts and leave the Anihilators alone. In massive quantities plasma bolts can be deadly because they all have splash damage. On a fast/light ship design they’re hard to beat.

The Annihilators are still a good weapon, they have an excellent splash radius, but the projectiles are slow and rarely hit. Plasma Bolts are cheaper, you can pack lots of them on a ship, and just as powerful. Rather than unlocking Annihilators, save your credits for the more expensive weapons.

Flurry Missiles:

Not as good as the starting faction missiles, but they’re cheap and your only real long-range weapon until you get nukes. Suck it up and use them until you unlock the other weapons. The Plasma Bolts and Gauss Beams are more deadly, so those should be your main starting weapons. If you already have nukes on your ship, you can add a few missiles as well. Enemy point-defense will have a tougher time taking-out the nukes if they also have missiles flying their way.

If you’re facing other ships with nukes, the missiles can be set to point-defense. Because nukes detonate when they hit a solid object, missiles are actually a good defensive weapon verse Agents with nukes.

The missiles are a good sub-weapon, but don’t focus on them. They are too slow to be really effective at range, and they don’t do enough damage to quickly kill tougher opponents.

Gauss Beams:

These things rock, but they’re directional and aren’t effective enough on their own. Offset them with plasma bolts for a good small ship. Keep it light and maneuverable, it’ll kill almost all other small ships.

Armor Spikes:

These things are broken. Not in an ‘is this a bug’ way, more like ‘holy crap these are strong’ way. Awesome melee damage. You can slice right through heavy armor as if it’s not even there. Attach them to a spinning ship to get a nice buzz-saw effect. You also don’t have to have them sticking-up. Lay them flat so you have more surface area to do damage, and it won’t slow your spinner down when it bumps into something. Equip them to the front and sides of your ship and you’ll insta-kill just about anything you run into.

If you but two armor spikes together, you get a rectangle. You can build the shell of your ship out of armor spike blocks and slice through anything you would otherwise collide with.

Who Needs Weapons!

For some extra fun with armor spikes, make a spinning probe that’s just armor spikes and thrusters for about 100P. Release a pack of these ships in an area with a lot of Bee buildings for some fun. The little probes will randomly slice through the environment and cause chaos. They’re not really effective at killing enemies and they’re completely uncontrollable, but it is stupid fun.

Or you can go the other direction and create a giant snow-plow ship out of just armor spikes and thrusters. Download mine here and try it out. You’ll basically destroy anything on-screen that you run into, and because the ship is so large – that means ridiculously easy kills. Feel free to clobber Agent fleets just by flying thru them – no weapons required. The whole ship is just 6,oooP worth of Armor Spikes and thrusters.

Late Game – Obliterators / Nukes:

It’s hard to beat Nukes. They’re slow, but hugely powerful – especially in masses. It’s not necessarily intense damage that kills you, but the enormous area it covers almost always includes your command module.

Ships with heavy shields, or troll ships that are so large that the blast can’t reach a command module will actually survive nuke hits. However, multiple nukes will still kill those designs. Fast ships can dodge nukes, but they usually end-up running into one as they’re dodging around. The nukes are also pretty tough for point defense to take out. A lot of the time they’ll actually push the nuke away rather than destroying it.

Obliterators are also fantastic. You have a very powerful burst laser that also does splash damage. You can kill enemy command modules without even breaking through their armor, and often a burst blast will cut ships in half.

Both of these weapons are expensive, so your options are either two nukes, two obliterators, or one nuke and one obliterator.

If you want to kill other nuke fleets, equip one nuke and one obliterator. If you set them to point defense, the obliterators do a great job of killing opposing nukes so your ship stays alive.

Tactics:

This faction is pretty easy. You can either focus your small ships on gauss beams and masses of plasma bolts, or you can cram the expensive weapons onto the smallest ships possible. Use armor spikes on the outside of your ships. Your large ships will obviously use nukes and obliterators to full effect. If you keep them mobile, they’ll be more effective than if they’re heavily armored and sluggish.

The cargo blocks that hold 200R are pointless. Don’t bother putting them on your ship unless you can afford the extra weight. Instead, add more Harvesters for storage. Each one holds 1,000R, only costs 5P. You can add a few to your ships without adding a whole bunch of extra weight.

You don’t have any shields, but your armor blocks have some of the highest hp in the game. Try to keep your ships light though. Maneuverability will go a long way towards keeping them alive. If they use so much armor that they become slow, they’ll be sitting-ducks for agile Agents. Your small fighters can use the lighter non-armor blocks for lightness.

That’s about it. You have good armor, make use of it. Keep your ships mobile and they’ll be deadly. Most enemies won’t be able to hit you and eventually they’ll run into the nukes, or you’ll run into them and the armor spikes will clobber them. Unless you seriously screw something up, you should own the AI factions and Agents.

Verse Faction 4 Agents, pile-on the nukes and try to flank them with your more mobile ships. This is where speed will come in handy. Faction 4 ships are less effective if you get around the sides of them, but sit in front of them and you’ll probably die.

If you have trouble with anything, get in close. With your armor spikes, nukes, beam weapons, and splash damage from plasma bolts you’ll be virtually unstoppable at close range. You could struggle if Agents with better range weapons can keep their distance. Add more thrusters, close-in and crush ’em.

That’s all for now. Go blow some shit up.