Some newbie Qs

[PFox]

New player trying to fill in the gaps left by the manual.
- Tractors/Combines: Are listed as 45x/24x better at their job than the gardeners/harvesters. Ignoring attacks/flak, does that simply mean you can replace 45/24 gardeners/harvesters with 1 of these? Or that if you replaced them 1:1, you could earn a ton more seeds? (if you had already maxed them for your plants/land)

- I see tons of messages about sending your troops away and recalling them, but either the tutorial skipped the reason or I missed it. Is this to preserve your troops if attacked (sacrificing your land to keep them alive) or the idea to recall them such that they skip the first 2 ticks of combat and hit in the "close" combat tick ?(skipping the damage from ranged enemies)

- The SAS, afaik, are the Anti-rape forces, designed to protect lower players from higher ones. Are they meant to trigger if you attack a higher player with an inferior force? As I had a bot suddenly pull them out and slaughter a pile of hippies (hurray!)

- Is it possible to steal land from bots? The combat report said I'd stolen 179 land and yet I never got it (see below)...

- Is it normal to get the Medium AND Close combat ticks at once? Or did it bug and thats why I got 0 land?
[close] 1,501,003 hostile Hippy attacked, distracting 1,396,762 allied staff.
[close] 3,281,892 hostile Yob attacked, disabling 1,123,720 allied staff.
[middle] 600,000 allied Automoton attacked, killing 1,973,408 hostile staff.
[close] 9,518 allied Geo-Phys Thief stole 179 land. [49] tree. [46] bush. [42] flower. [42] grass. [0] uncultivated.

 

[Koeniej]

- Tractors/Combines: Are listed as 45x/24x better at their job than the gardeners/harvesters. Ignoring attacks/flak, does that simply mean you can replace 45/24 gardeners/harvesters with 1 of these? Or that if you replaced them 1:1, you could earn a ton more seeds? (if you had already maxed them for your plants/land)

The first, they do the same, you just need less Tractors/Combines to get your max amount of seeds.

- I see tons of messages about sending your troops away and recalling them, but either the tutorial skipped the reason or I missed it. Is this to preserve your troops if attacked (sacrificing your land to keep them alive) or the idea to recall them such that they skip the first 2 ticks of combat and hit in the "close" combat tick ?(skipping the damage from ranged enemies)

Both, depends on what you want really. If there is no way you can fight the incoming, you can send them out and give up land. If the attacker has lots of units that fire range/middle and you can win the fight at close you should let them come back for close. (Some units dont fire middle tick and some dont fire range so there are loads more tactics to try)

- The SAS, afaik, are the Anti-rape forces, designed to protect lower players from higher ones. Are they meant to trigger if you attack a higher player with an inferior force? As I had a bot suddenly pull them out and slaughter a pile of hippies (hurray!)

Just to be clear, only solo's can get the help of Anti-rape, not allied. And it all depends on the targets 'AR-Mod'. The higher ones AR-Mod is, the more likely Anti-rape will come and help. So people can trigger AR on smaller and bigger targets, depending on how much they send.

- Is it possible to steal land from bots? The combat report said I'd stolen 179 land and yet I never got it (see below)...

Yes its definately possible to steal from bots! And especially for new people its a good source of land! Since they will not get defence (only AR) and are usually pretty easy to land on!

- Is it normal to get the Medium AND Close combat ticks at once? Or did it bug and thats why I got 0 land?
[close] 1,501,003 hostile Hippy attacked, distracting 1,396,762 allied staff.
[close] 3,281,892 hostile Yob attacked, disabling 1,123,720 allied staff.
[middle] 600,000 allied Automoton attacked, killing 1,973,408 hostile staff.
[close] 9,518 allied Geo-Phys Thief stole 179 land. [49] tree. [46] bush. [42] flower. [42] grass. [0] uncultivated.

The fact you got the middle and close tick in one battle report means that there was someone 1 or 2 ticks behind you:

You were attacking for 1 (close) the close firing units targetted you.
Your followere was attacking for 2/3 the range/middle firing units (automotons) targetted him. You both got the same battle report so it shows bot ticks in 1.

And about the land, the only reason i can think of that you didn't get it is that you dont have Geo-Phys Thieves yet and there was another attacker (besides your follower) on the same tick as you. If you send 'wheelbarrowers' and there is someone on the same tick with Geo-Phys Thieves they will override your wheelbarrowers (since they are inferior) and they will take all the land instead of you!

 

[Chris_]

Also in regards to sending out your troops, people don't always attack purely for land, sometimes they send with the sole purpose of killing/bribing your troops. Obviously if they're going to kill you but not steal your land, sending away is a good choice

 

[PFox]

- Is it normal to get the Medium AND Close combat ticks at once? Or did it bug and thats why I got 0 land?
[close] 1,501,003 hostile Hippy attacked, distracting 1,396,762 allied staff.
[close] 3,281,892 hostile Yob attacked, disabling 1,123,720 allied staff.
[middle] 600,000 allied Automoton attacked, killing 1,973,408 hostile staff.
[close] 9,518 allied Geo-Phys Thief stole 179 land. [49] tree. [46] bush. [42] flower. [42] grass. [0] uncultivated.

The fact you got the middle and close tick in one battle report means that there was someone 1 or 2 ticks behind you:

You were attacking for 1 (close) the close firing units targetted you.
Your followere was attacking for 2/3 the range/middle firing units (automotons) targetted him. You both got the same battle report so it shows bot ticks in 1.

And about the land, the only reason i can think of that you didn't get it is that you dont have Geo-Phys Thieves yet and there was another attacker (besides your follower) on the same tick as you. If you send 'wheelbarrowers' and there is someone on the same tick with Geo-Phys Thieves they will override your wheelbarrowers (since they are inferior) and they will take all the land instead of you!

Thats the odd thing, The automotons AND Geo-Phys were all mine, no one else had been attacking. I also got a report for the final "close" tick afterwards, but no land in that one. So not entirely sure what happened there.

As for the other questions, big thanks Cleared up that lot, so I see 0 use in tractors/combines except as flak, as joining so late in the game I got WAAAAAAAAAAY more than enough harvesters/gardeners for land duties.
For the AR, I sent barely anything, but it was against a Bot so that kinda makes sense.

 

[Chris_]

If the autos and geos were both yours then when that battle report you posted took place, you were attacking for 2 (middle tick) and someone was ahead of you attacking for 1 (close tick), hence why you didn't get any land (you only steal on close tick)

 

[MattM]

As for the other questions, big thanks Cleared up that lot, so I see 0 use in tractors/combines except as flak, as joining so late in the game I got WAAAAAAAAAAY more than enough harvesters/gardeners for land duties.

Tractors and combines are very useful. You need relatively few to sit at home harvesting and planting, while you can send your cheap gardener/harvester flak on attacks. Also, if someone happens to attack you, because you will likely have many more gardeners than tractors/combines, if any INN troops get killed, the combines etc. are likely to survive, and continue harvesting for you (which otherwise you might miss out on!).

Moreover, even if they do get hit by the attacker, they are very, very durable!

 

[Stargazer]

Another one from me:

Scrap Bot[close] LET NLD INN 200 4 £50,000 * ***** ** ***
Shield AndroidLET[close]LET ALL 770 3 £45,000 * ****** *. *

I was planning on using sheilds as my let flak,but surely scrap bots would do just as good of a job?Only 5k more (-* of armour) & actually usefull last tick. ???

 

[Nickk]

Another one from me:

Scrap Bot[close] LET NLD INN 200 4 £50,000 * ***** ** ***
Shield AndroidLET[close]LET ALL 770 3 £45,000 * ****** *. *

I was planning on using sheilds as my let flak,but surely scrap bots would do just as good of a job?Only 5k more (-* of armour) & actually usefull last tick. ???

The * system is just a loose interpretation of how much health/armour/AD/HD each unit has. In reality (based on my experience), shields have much more armour than scraps.

 

[Max]

Unfortunately Stargazer, Scrap Bots actually die very quickly if you are not careful, don't be deceived by the star system as Nickk pointed out!

I think PAs get 8:1 on Scraps, which over three ticks can be quite painful (for example).

 

[Stargazer]

Aw dam :s I know it's just rough system but how can something with one star damage get 8:1 on something with 5 star armour!?


Psychopathic Android LETKills [all]LET NLT 110 4 £50,000 * ***** ** *

 

[MattM]

Aw dam :s I know it's just rough system but how can something with one star damage get 8:1 on something with 5 star armour!?


Psychopathic Android LETKills [all]LET NLT 110 4 £50,000 * ***** ** *

Suppose PAs did 0.7 AD and Scraps had 5.1 AR for example.

 

[Stargazer]

Good point

 

[antisback]

Shields actually have over 3.5 times more AR than scraps, though scraps have slighlty more HP but not enough to really matter.

 

[Stargazer]

Was hoping you would answer shields it is!

 

[Coruba]

On a final note to the original poster - don't get disheartened no matter how hard it gets. The game is a very steep learning curve for a beginning player.

At least give yourself 2-3 rounds before giving in assuming you feel the need to do so.

 

[willymchilybily]

The stars in the manual are actually exponential i believe. This is what i was told and thought azzer confirmed when i first started getting to grips with the game. Not sure if its these forums or the old one.

 

[Max]

It loosely follows a binary logarithm with a base of 2.

So if 1 star is equivalent to a value of 2, 2 stars is roughly 2^2=4, 3 stars is roughly 2^3=8, 4 stars is roughly 2^4=16, 5 stars is roughly 2^5=32.

You can expect to see a 5 star HD unit firing on an armour stripped 1 star HP unit with a ratio of one to 32/2=16.

 

[MattM]

It loosely follows a binary logarithm with a base of 2.

So if 1 star is equivalent to a value of 2, 2 stars is roughly 2^2=4, 3 stars is roughly 2^3=8, 4 stars is roughly 2^4=16, 5 stars is roughly 2^5=32.

You can expect to see a 5 star HD unit firing on an armour stripped 1 star HP unit with a ratio of one to 32/2=16.

So presumably the values taken can span a whole range with standard rounding? (i.e. 6.5 HD would be rounded up to 3 stars, etc.?)

 

[No-Dachi]

yes, 1 star is 1-2000, then two stars would be 2001-4000, etc. Which is why a unit with 2 stars can die almost as easy as one with one star.