Base Defence

Combat against units in a base is done on unit number, ie you end up fight the unit with the lowest number first. You can use this to you advantage by disbanding and reforming the units in the base to move all the damaged bots to higher numbers. This gives them longer to recover and leaves your opponent always attacking your undamaged units.

Capturing Bases

The whole point of the game, you want to capture all of the bases on the current map to move onto the next map. To capture a base all you need to do is move one of your units into it and assuming its empty its yours. If there are any enemy units in the base, you have to destroy all of them. See base defence above. Once a base is yours, you gain its manufacturing capabilities and any ammo. Unfortunately you don't get any OKE's that haven't been assigned to units.

Getting a unit to an enemy base can be a problem, as often there are enemy units in the way. Holding and enemy base can be even harder as often there are offer enemy bases close by. My normal strategy starts with forming the starting robots into units (usually units 32, 31 etc), then sending them off to be destroyed. Build your own bots, defending against any incoming attacks. When you have enough units to reach from your base to the nearest opposing one, start deploying them one each turn towards the target base. The advantage of a single line of units is you can bring your damaged ones back for repair. By the time you reach the base you will have wiped out all the units near the base, and have enough units in reinforcement to stop them re-capturing the base. If the route goes through a single hex chokepoint, you won't be able to bring your damaged units back. Either put them out of the way for repair later, or line them up for some suicide missions.

If your OKE's aren't performing that well you can usually win by attrition. All my Prowler based designs are relatively cheap, but in the end time spent improving your software will make the tactical side easier. In my experience the hardest map on a planet was usually the first one. The faster cpu's available in later maps made a large difference to how effective my OKE's were.

Control your Spending

This only really applies to maps where you win by attrition (usually the first map on a planet). Fund R & D only for the items you are going to use. Only buy blueprints for stuff you actually use. This leaves you the more cash to build robots with.

Factory Lines and Levels

Adding a production line costs 24900, and gives you an extra level one line. So you gain an extra eighty process points, and more importantly another production line. Each process point costs 311.25.

Upgrading a line gives an extra 20 process points for levels 2 and 3, with 10 points extra for levels four and above. Each extra level costs 7600. For levels 2 and 3 each process point costs 380, with levels four and above (upto a maximum level of nine) costing 760.

In general its cheaper to add lines than to upgrade the existing ones. Assuming a OKE that costs 240 process points, three level one lines will produce a whole unit in three turns, whereas two level three lines will churn out two robots every other turn. The timing may be important. You also need a line that has a level that is at least as high as the level of the robot. I usually ended up with two level three lines (the most complex design I ever built was level 4), with one level one for producing ammo on. Not the most cost efficent, but with my designs either just under the 240 or 320 points, easier to manage.

Unit numbers and Movement

As mentioned in base defence, the order in which your units do anything is determined by the unit number. The lower unit numbers move first, fight first etc. This means that a column of units lead by high unit number will result in he leading unit blocking the movement of the units behind. The higher unit will then move, leaving a gap behind it. Not ideal for getting the maximum amount of inter unit support. Avoid this by re-aranging your units in your base, to put the lower number units first. Disband any units returning for repair, and reform them atthe end of the sequence.