Post by frunobulax on Sept 27, 2017 7:33:08 GMT -5
How should a new-ish player develop his hangar?
1. Hangar composition
I'm not going extensively into which kinds of robots you should buy. But I'd like to write a bit about which weapons work together.
The most important recommendation here is to stick to weapons of similar type and distance. A Thunder Tulumbas Noricum Golem will always be inefficient - Thunder works only from close range, Noricum from long range, Tulums from mid range. So from long range you can use only your light weapon, from midrange only light and medium, and if you get in point blank distance the Noricums will be useless and the Tulums will work, but there are much better weapons in close range. Also, Thunder requires line of sight, while Noricums are fired best behind cover.
The safest way for new players is to stick to the well known silver setups Plasma Griffin, RDB Griffin, DB Griffin, Punisher/Thunder Leo) until they develop a feeling which robots to buy for their gold. Of course, this is not always easy, depending on what weapons you have (levelled) and what you're planning for the future. So those are combinations that work well:
As for robots, don't waste time and money on upgrading (silver) medium robots, except possibly a Golem or two (those are efficient, dirt cheap and quick to level up). Once you have the money, go for 2 Griffins, 1 Leo and either another Griffin/Leo or perhaps a beacon capper (assuming you bought that 4th slot as soon as you could afford it).
2. Level up bots or weapons, one Robot first or all equally?
Now, what is a good level progression? I am a believer in levelling the hangar equally. I've seen many players that develop only one level 11 or 12 robot while the rest of the hangar is low level. This may even work in some games, especially if that robot is an Ancilot with regenerating shield. But ultimately, the upgrade costs and times progress in a way that you get more overall firepower if you stick to nearly equal levels.
Consider this: To upgrade a Taran Ancilot from level 1 to 12, you will need 2 months and 223 million silver. In that time, you can develop a full hangar of 5 robots to level 8, with less silver. And there should be no doubt which is stronger here. Also, some players will focus on just one sniper, say a Trebuchet Fury. Apart from the fact that even a level 12 Treb Fury can be easily defeated by say a level 7 Galahad or Bulgasari, you're betting on a certain meta this way. The meta changes from time to time, so you risk having invested all of your time and money in upgrading a build that may become useless at a glance. Of course, if one robot is the workhorse in your hangar (like you have one Haechi and a lot of silver robots), keep that workhorse 1-3 levels higher than the rest.
Bots or weapons? Older guides will recommend to develop weapons first. This is outdated (see matchmaking comments below), and as you'll see in a moment, I suggest to keep robots 1-2 levels higher than the weapons. A big pro for upgrading robots until level 9 at least is that they gain speed on each level. Using the usual notation ("6/7 means level 6 robots, level 7 weapons), I would recommend the following:
1. Get the hangar to 6/6. This will be reasonably fast, about 2-3 days per robot.
2. Try to identify your target hangar. If you have a RDB Griffin or Gary in your lineup that you know you'll replace eventually, I wouldn't upgrade them much over level 6. Maybe 8-9 to get full speed for light robots (who are quick to upgrade anyway), but at most 7 for other robots and weapons that are stopgaps.
3. Upgrade robots to 9 and weapons to level 8, robots first. So you can go to 9/6 and then to 9/8, or maybe to 8/6, then 8/7, 9/7 and 9/8. If you have a certain "impact robot" in your hangar, say a Haechi or Lancelot, upgrade that one with priority.
4. After that, it becomes interesting, for 2 reasons: (a) upgrades become really expensive after level 9, so you don't want to upgrade something that you'll shelve soon, and (b) robots have their full speed, so there is one reason less to upgrade robots. So, consider what exactly an upgrade will give you:
- Upgrading a robot will get you 6% more HP. Some robots gain 8% per level. Upgrading weapons by 1 level add 10% more DPS. Now you can just compare costs and upgrade times. In many cases it will be much cheaper and faster to upgrade the robot first.
- Robots with shields (Lancelot, Carnage, Haechi, Bulgasari) gain shield and level with the upgrade. It can be effective to upgrade them first.
- Snipers, midrangers, tanks, basically all robots that you expect to take some damage and function for a time after that, should also be upgraded further. Upgrading a sniper Leo from 9 to 10 takes 69 hours and gives 6% more HP. Upgrading all weapons from 9 to 10 will give 10% more damage, but takes 172 hours. For a sniper, the efficiency is roughly damage*HP, because it will have to take a lot of shots from enemy snipers, so clearly upgrading the Leo is more efficient here.
- Glass cannons on the other side profit not as much from an upgrade. A level 9 DB Griffin is not much different from a level 12 Griffin - if you kill the enemy with your 4s burst you'll live, if not you'll most likely die.
- Upgrading weapons first has of course the benefit that they can be used on a variety of robots. So if you like to switch your hangar around, and upgrade more than 5 robots but switch weapons around, it's more efficient to upgrade the commonly used weapons first.
So, what's the recommendation?
(a) If you're sure that you'll use the robot for a very long time (say you have a Haechi, Bulgasari or maybe Fury), go robot first (that is, robot is up to 2 levels higher). In most cases this will give you better value than upgrading weapons.
(b) If you think you'll replace the robot eventually, stick to level 9, unless the upgrades are very cheap (Golem, Natasha).
(c) In all other cases, I recommend to have the robot level roughly equal to the weapon level (+/- one level), but do develop weapons that have a fixed spot in the meta and are unlikely to be devalued (Orkans, Tarans, Zeus, Ancile) first.
5. Upgrades to level 11 and especially to level 12 are very expensive. Unless you have 500 million silver stashed somewhere, I strongly recommend to get your whole hangar to 10 and then to 11 before starting those level 12 upgrades.
6. If you run out of silver, think about upgrading some changeup stuff. For example, a Raijin and a Fujin are very cheap to upgrade to level 10 and take some time (13 days, 11 million).
So, to bring this down to a simple suggestion: If you have a fixed hangar and don't switch around robots a lot, it's a good strategy to have robot levels 1-3 levels higher than weapon levels. Exceptions are "glass cannons" which should be brought to level 9 for full speed, but can then remain on par or slightly below weapon level.
If you do switch a lot (that is, you may develop 10 or more different robots), just keep the robots on the same level as weapons.
3. Silver requirements
New players routinely think we're kidding them if they hear that silver is the real bottleneck in the game, not gold. The reason is that upgrades are rather cheap at lower levels, before they start to get interesting. Here are the costs for a 5-robot hangar (1xGriffin, 2x Lance, 1x Dash, 1x Carnage).
Overall, that 5-robot hangar takes 286 days and 1021 million silver to level 12. And that's assuming that the meta doesn't change, and you keep upgrading and playing the same robots for almost a year. The first is unlikely and the second is boring. But anyway, you see what you can expect - if you're playing enough to earn 4 million silver a day right from day 1 then you'll be fine. Without premium, that's probably close to 20 matches, so if you plan to play long term, you should get premium at least for stretches where you have a bit more time to play.
4. When to upgrade to Mk2?
There are "burst" setups, or glass cannons, like DB Griff and Thunder Carnage. For those builds level 9 is rather popular, because if they are on the receiving end of a high-powered build (PDB Griff etc.) they're dead. They are built to quickly defeat an enemy while taking little or no damage themselves. Getting them to level 12, or adding 20% HP to those builds by going Mk2, will add little to their survivability.
On the other hand, we have builds that will take quite a lot of shots, like pretty much any midrange or sniper builds or tanks (Leo, Raijin, also Lancelot). For midrange (I'll focus on that because sniping works similar), they will often receive some damage from other midrangers and snipers. And we're talking about a lot of hits here, my favorite midrangers (Gekko Zeus or Tempest Molot Natasha) can take about 4 hits from a Zeus Fury and still live. Tanks of course are built around being able to absorb some damage. Adding 20% HP there will indeed increase the efficienc of the build a lot. The same holds for bots that have a built-in Ancile or physical shield, because making a robot Mk2 will increase both the HP of the bot and the shield.
When to upgrade? The decision is not different from deciding whether to level up weapons or robot first. Apart from practical considerations (you don't want an upgrade to finish when you're not able to follow up), ask what does the most for your robot. Keep in mind that a robot level adds usually 6% HP (some robots, including Natasha, Fury, Doc, Patton and Golem, grow at 8% per level) while weapon DPS grows by 10% per level. Assuming that we can use HP*DPS is decent approximation of the robot value (for midrangers and tanks, not for glass cannons), you can simply calculate what is most efficient. Take for example my Facebook Gameroom Tempest Punisher Natasha, which was 10/8 a short time ago. Adding 10% more DPS (upgrading Tempests Punishers to level 9) takes exactly 150 hours and 18 million. Adding 8% HP takes 31 hours and 7 million. In fact, adding 16% HP (level the Natty up to 12) takes only 64 hours and 16 million. So I obviously went for the level 12 upgrade first before taking the weapons to level 9.
Now, upgrading a level 12 robot to Mk2 has the side effect that it won't be available for a while (or rather weaker until you reach level 9 or so). But aside from that, it's just a 20% increase for 500 gold and whatever it costs to take the robot from level 1 to level 12 again. In the case of that Natty, it's about 9 days and 27 million silver. So in the example above I would increase weapons to 9 and probably to 10 before I consider taking the Natty to Mk2.
Most other robots are much more expensive, though. A Lancelot takes 20 days and 55 million for a full Mk2 upgrade. Say you have a 12/11 Thorkalot, it takes 13 days and 72 million to upgrade the weapons to 12. So, 20% more HP to bot and shield for 20/55 or 10% more DPS for 13/72? Going Mk2 wins, hands down. A 12/10 Lancelot is more tricky, as weapon upgrade to 11 takes only 10 days and 44 million. I'd still favor the Mk2 upgrade in this situation.
Some WSP robots are rather cheap and take long. So if you are silver constrained and like a Carnage, Fujin or Raijin, you should focus on the robot. Say an Orkan Fujin at 12/10: Getting the robot to Mk2 (20% more HP and shield), you''ll need 27 days and 41 million. Getting the Orkans to level 12 (20% more power), you'll need 43 days but a whopping 168 million silver.
Bottom line: Most robots are best developed by getting them to 12/10, then upgrading the robot to Mk2 level 12, then weapons to (Mk1) 12.
5. Hangar and matchmaking
Finally, let's get something out of the way. I still hear a lot of recommendations "upgrade weapons over bots, this will give you easier opponents".
This is not true. The current matchmaking, while the details are not known, seems to take three things into account:
1. The league of the player. This is the major component for selecting opponents.
2. Win rate. Though there is no statistical data, many players observed that they get harder opponents if their win rate is significantly over 50%.
3. Hangar setup. This may be a minor component, and possibly only as protection for new players. But when I started a new account on facebook, it was very obvious that the moment I put the firsrt Griffin in my hangar, I suddenly got much stronger opponents. Until then I was fighting Destriers and Cossacks, and suddenly I was up against everything that silver and gold could buy. Also, I remember from my silver days that using an all-light hangar would make a difference on opponent strength, too.
However, (3) is not strong enough to allow you to develop medium robots, you will be matched against heavy robots anyway. (2) is pretty much out of control. (1) means that you should just develop your hangar, and hopefully the matchmaking (despite all warts, tanking, clubbing and all) will put you in the league where you belong, i.e. get roughly 50% win rate. Unfortunately that also means if you switch robots and go to a "lighter" hangar, you'll still get pretty much the same opponents.
Update: Added the section about Mk2 upgrading.
1. Hangar composition
I'm not going extensively into which kinds of robots you should buy. But I'd like to write a bit about which weapons work together.
The most important recommendation here is to stick to weapons of similar type and distance. A Thunder Tulumbas Noricum Golem will always be inefficient - Thunder works only from close range, Noricum from long range, Tulums from mid range. So from long range you can use only your light weapon, from midrange only light and medium, and if you get in point blank distance the Noricums will be useless and the Tulums will work, but there are much better weapons in close range. Also, Thunder requires line of sight, while Noricums are fired best behind cover.
The safest way for new players is to stick to the well known silver setups Plasma Griffin, RDB Griffin, DB Griffin, Punisher/Thunder Leo) until they develop a feeling which robots to buy for their gold. Of course, this is not always easy, depending on what weapons you have (levelled) and what you're planning for the future. So those are combinations that work well:
- Pure bullets. Punishers/Molots/Tempests can be bought right from the start and are reasonably efficient. In fact, Punishers are one of the most efficient weapons right now. They can be mixed with other weapons that require line of sight, most notably Punishers with Magnums and Tarans, and Tempest/Molots with Gekkos.
- Pure splash. Mix Pinatas/Orkans for short range, Tulus/Pins/Triidents for mid range.
- Pure sniping. Mix Gekkos with Trebuchets, Kang-Dae and Nashorn.
- Pure special weapons. Gekkos and Noricums are pretty unique, so they work best in setups that utilize as most of them as possible. For Gekkos that's the Leo (3 slots, high HP) and Patton (4 slots, low HP). Noricums work best on a Patton, period. (Unless you want to go Noricum Karate.)
As for robots, don't waste time and money on upgrading (silver) medium robots, except possibly a Golem or two (those are efficient, dirt cheap and quick to level up). Once you have the money, go for 2 Griffins, 1 Leo and either another Griffin/Leo or perhaps a beacon capper (assuming you bought that 4th slot as soon as you could afford it).
2. Level up bots or weapons, one Robot first or all equally?
Consider this: To upgrade a Taran Ancilot from level 1 to 12, you will need 2 months and 223 million silver. In that time, you can develop a full hangar of 5 robots to level 8, with less silver. And there should be no doubt which is stronger here. Also, some players will focus on just one sniper, say a Trebuchet Fury. Apart from the fact that even a level 12 Treb Fury can be easily defeated by say a level 7 Galahad or Bulgasari, you're betting on a certain meta this way. The meta changes from time to time, so you risk having invested all of your time and money in upgrading a build that may become useless at a glance. Of course, if one robot is the workhorse in your hangar (like you have one Haechi and a lot of silver robots), keep that workhorse 1-3 levels higher than the rest.
Bots or weapons? Older guides will recommend to develop weapons first. This is outdated (see matchmaking comments below), and as you'll see in a moment, I suggest to keep robots 1-2 levels higher than the weapons. A big pro for upgrading robots until level 9 at least is that they gain speed on each level. Using the usual notation ("6/7 means level 6 robots, level 7 weapons), I would recommend the following:
1. Get the hangar to 6/6. This will be reasonably fast, about 2-3 days per robot.
2. Try to identify your target hangar. If you have a RDB Griffin or Gary in your lineup that you know you'll replace eventually, I wouldn't upgrade them much over level 6. Maybe 8-9 to get full speed for light robots (who are quick to upgrade anyway), but at most 7 for other robots and weapons that are stopgaps.
3. Upgrade robots to 9 and weapons to level 8, robots first. So you can go to 9/6 and then to 9/8, or maybe to 8/6, then 8/7, 9/7 and 9/8. If you have a certain "impact robot" in your hangar, say a Haechi or Lancelot, upgrade that one with priority.
4. After that, it becomes interesting, for 2 reasons: (a) upgrades become really expensive after level 9, so you don't want to upgrade something that you'll shelve soon, and (b) robots have their full speed, so there is one reason less to upgrade robots. So, consider what exactly an upgrade will give you:
- Upgrading a robot will get you 6% more HP. Some robots gain 8% per level. Upgrading weapons by 1 level add 10% more DPS. Now you can just compare costs and upgrade times. In many cases it will be much cheaper and faster to upgrade the robot first.
- Robots with shields (Lancelot, Carnage, Haechi, Bulgasari) gain shield and level with the upgrade. It can be effective to upgrade them first.
- Snipers, midrangers, tanks, basically all robots that you expect to take some damage and function for a time after that, should also be upgraded further. Upgrading a sniper Leo from 9 to 10 takes 69 hours and gives 6% more HP. Upgrading all weapons from 9 to 10 will give 10% more damage, but takes 172 hours. For a sniper, the efficiency is roughly damage*HP, because it will have to take a lot of shots from enemy snipers, so clearly upgrading the Leo is more efficient here.
- Glass cannons on the other side profit not as much from an upgrade. A level 9 DB Griffin is not much different from a level 12 Griffin - if you kill the enemy with your 4s burst you'll live, if not you'll most likely die.
- Upgrading weapons first has of course the benefit that they can be used on a variety of robots. So if you like to switch your hangar around, and upgrade more than 5 robots but switch weapons around, it's more efficient to upgrade the commonly used weapons first.
So, what's the recommendation?
(a) If you're sure that you'll use the robot for a very long time (say you have a Haechi, Bulgasari or maybe Fury), go robot first (that is, robot is up to 2 levels higher). In most cases this will give you better value than upgrading weapons.
(b) If you think you'll replace the robot eventually, stick to level 9, unless the upgrades are very cheap (Golem, Natasha).
(c) In all other cases, I recommend to have the robot level roughly equal to the weapon level (+/- one level), but do develop weapons that have a fixed spot in the meta and are unlikely to be devalued (Orkans, Tarans, Zeus, Ancile) first.
5. Upgrades to level 11 and especially to level 12 are very expensive. Unless you have 500 million silver stashed somewhere, I strongly recommend to get your whole hangar to 10 and then to 11 before starting those level 12 upgrades.
6. If you run out of silver, think about upgrading some changeup stuff. For example, a Raijin and a Fujin are very cheap to upgrade to level 10 and take some time (13 days, 11 million).
So, to bring this down to a simple suggestion: If you have a fixed hangar and don't switch around robots a lot, it's a good strategy to have robot levels 1-3 levels higher than weapon levels. Exceptions are "glass cannons" which should be brought to level 9 for full speed, but can then remain on par or slightly below weapon level.
If you do switch a lot (that is, you may develop 10 or more different robots), just keep the robots on the same level as weapons.
3. Silver requirements
New players routinely think we're kidding them if they hear that silver is the real bottleneck in the game, not gold. The reason is that upgrades are rather cheap at lower levels, before they start to get interesting. Here are the costs for a 5-robot hangar (1xGriffin, 2x Lance, 1x Dash, 1x Carnage).
- Upgrade all 5 from scratch to levell 8 takes 54 days and 70 million silver (1.3 million per day).
- Upgrades from 8 to 10 take 83 days and 253 million silver (3 million per day)
- Upgrades from 10 to 11 take 65 days and 265 million silver (4 million per day)
- Upgrades from 11 to 12 take 84 days and 430 million silver (5 million per day)
Overall, that 5-robot hangar takes 286 days and 1021 million silver to level 12. And that's assuming that the meta doesn't change, and you keep upgrading and playing the same robots for almost a year. The first is unlikely and the second is boring. But anyway, you see what you can expect - if you're playing enough to earn 4 million silver a day right from day 1 then you'll be fine. Without premium, that's probably close to 20 matches, so if you plan to play long term, you should get premium at least for stretches where you have a bit more time to play.
4. When to upgrade to Mk2?
There are "burst" setups, or glass cannons, like DB Griff and Thunder Carnage. For those builds level 9 is rather popular, because if they are on the receiving end of a high-powered build (PDB Griff etc.) they're dead. They are built to quickly defeat an enemy while taking little or no damage themselves. Getting them to level 12, or adding 20% HP to those builds by going Mk2, will add little to their survivability.
On the other hand, we have builds that will take quite a lot of shots, like pretty much any midrange or sniper builds or tanks (Leo, Raijin, also Lancelot). For midrange (I'll focus on that because sniping works similar), they will often receive some damage from other midrangers and snipers. And we're talking about a lot of hits here, my favorite midrangers (Gekko Zeus or Tempest Molot Natasha) can take about 4 hits from a Zeus Fury and still live. Tanks of course are built around being able to absorb some damage. Adding 20% HP there will indeed increase the efficienc of the build a lot. The same holds for bots that have a built-in Ancile or physical shield, because making a robot Mk2 will increase both the HP of the bot and the shield.
When to upgrade? The decision is not different from deciding whether to level up weapons or robot first. Apart from practical considerations (you don't want an upgrade to finish when you're not able to follow up), ask what does the most for your robot. Keep in mind that a robot level adds usually 6% HP (some robots, including Natasha, Fury, Doc, Patton and Golem, grow at 8% per level) while weapon DPS grows by 10% per level. Assuming that we can use HP*DPS is decent approximation of the robot value (for midrangers and tanks, not for glass cannons), you can simply calculate what is most efficient. Take for example my Facebook Gameroom Tempest Punisher Natasha, which was 10/8 a short time ago. Adding 10% more DPS (upgrading Tempests Punishers to level 9) takes exactly 150 hours and 18 million. Adding 8% HP takes 31 hours and 7 million. In fact, adding 16% HP (level the Natty up to 12) takes only 64 hours and 16 million. So I obviously went for the level 12 upgrade first before taking the weapons to level 9.
Now, upgrading a level 12 robot to Mk2 has the side effect that it won't be available for a while (or rather weaker until you reach level 9 or so). But aside from that, it's just a 20% increase for 500 gold and whatever it costs to take the robot from level 1 to level 12 again. In the case of that Natty, it's about 9 days and 27 million silver. So in the example above I would increase weapons to 9 and probably to 10 before I consider taking the Natty to Mk2.
Most other robots are much more expensive, though. A Lancelot takes 20 days and 55 million for a full Mk2 upgrade. Say you have a 12/11 Thorkalot, it takes 13 days and 72 million to upgrade the weapons to 12. So, 20% more HP to bot and shield for 20/55 or 10% more DPS for 13/72? Going Mk2 wins, hands down. A 12/10 Lancelot is more tricky, as weapon upgrade to 11 takes only 10 days and 44 million. I'd still favor the Mk2 upgrade in this situation.
Some WSP robots are rather cheap and take long. So if you are silver constrained and like a Carnage, Fujin or Raijin, you should focus on the robot. Say an Orkan Fujin at 12/10: Getting the robot to Mk2 (20% more HP and shield), you''ll need 27 days and 41 million. Getting the Orkans to level 12 (20% more power), you'll need 43 days but a whopping 168 million silver.
Bottom line: Most robots are best developed by getting them to 12/10, then upgrading the robot to Mk2 level 12, then weapons to (Mk1) 12.
5. Hangar and matchmaking
Finally, let's get something out of the way. I still hear a lot of recommendations "upgrade weapons over bots, this will give you easier opponents".
This is not true. The current matchmaking, while the details are not known, seems to take three things into account:
1. The league of the player. This is the major component for selecting opponents.
2. Win rate. Though there is no statistical data, many players observed that they get harder opponents if their win rate is significantly over 50%.
3. Hangar setup. This may be a minor component, and possibly only as protection for new players. But when I started a new account on facebook, it was very obvious that the moment I put the firsrt Griffin in my hangar, I suddenly got much stronger opponents. Until then I was fighting Destriers and Cossacks, and suddenly I was up against everything that silver and gold could buy. Also, I remember from my silver days that using an all-light hangar would make a difference on opponent strength, too.
However, (3) is not strong enough to allow you to develop medium robots, you will be matched against heavy robots anyway. (2) is pretty much out of control. (1) means that you should just develop your hangar, and hopefully the matchmaking (despite all warts, tanking, clubbing and all) will put you in the league where you belong, i.e. get roughly 50% win rate. Unfortunately that also means if you switch robots and go to a "lighter" hangar, you'll still get pretty much the same opponents.
Update: Added the section about Mk2 upgrading.
