ZeldereX Online/Attacking

There are a few reasons why someone would want to attack: For trithium (Farming), to scout their defenses, to destroy the opponents units or to destroy their base. This tutorial explains the basics of all of these, explains the bombers and will teach you how to read attack logs.

The Units
There are three types of units in Zelderex which each have advantages and disadvantages.

Air(light blue): They are the fastest unit and also use the least fuel but have the least HP and attack points and quite a small cargo hold. These are the least expensive units and are great for Reconnaissance and scouting.

Land(green): Land have an average speed and fuel consumption and have an average amount of HP and attack points per unit. Their Cost/HP ratio is the best of all non-defense units

Hover(orange): These are the slowest units and use the most fuel but are also the strongest units with the most HP and attack points and the largest cargo hold. These are the most expensive units. However, their Cost/Damage ratio is the best of all non-defense units.

How to send an attack
To send an attack go to the exploration page, on this page you will see a grid, this is the map. To send the attack, select the square which the enemy’s base is in and click the sword icon which will appear next to their name just below the map, alternatively, select the explored area tab which will give a list of all the bases in the area you have explored. Enter the amount of units you want to send and it will say how much fuel is required for this attack, an estimate of how long the attack will take and there is a drop down list of buildings if you wanted to target a specific building, to send the attack click send. Once you have done this the progress of the attack will appear in the attack progress page and when the battle has been completed a log of the battle will appear in the attack log page.

Scouting
Scouting is very important in this game as it can help you to calculate how many units you want to send. Air units are the best for scouting missions as they are cheap, fast and very fuel efficient. I would recommend using a level one air unit for scouting (the scout) as it is the cheapest. Later in the game higher level air unit's can be useful as scouts as they can be equipped with components which allow them to find out more information but at this stage of the game you only need a scout, I would advise, however, that you purchase a resource scanner (requires level 1 Scanners researched) from the components page as it is cheap and allows you to see the enemy resources (must be equipped to scout to work, see components below to learn how to equip components). Once the scout has arrived at the base it will tell you how many units the opponent has. To find out the information once the attack has been completed go to the attack log screen and click 'view'. A pop-up will appear with the battle log (if you have a pop-up blocker you will need to disable it).

IMPORTANT: It is very important to send a scout before you send any other units whenever you do any form of attacking because if you send all your units blindly they could very easily get destroyed and you would be back to square one.

Here is an example scouting log:

Your force arrived at Somebody's base.

Your Force Consisted Of:

1 Scout

Enemy Force Consisted Of:

No One

You Lost:

Nothing

Enemy Lost:

Nothing

Buildings Harmed:

Radar Station took 2 damage of 2800hp.

Building has 2798hp remaining.

Buildings remaining: 13

Defense Field:

Defense Field prevented increased building damage.

Bonuses:

Your force successfully raided and stole 100 of 175,276.

Your force had no more cargo room to fit more trithium.

Outcome:

The battle was successful.

This log shows that he/she has no units so it would be safe to attack

Note: If you are having trouble understanding the attack log refer to the 'How to read an attack log' section of the tutorial further down the page.

Farming
This is the most time consuming method of earning money but if done effectively can also be the most productive. Farming is where you attack other players to steal there trithium so that you can return it to your base and convert it to cash. There are several things you need in order to be able to farm someone: A unit factory (hover, land or air) to buy the units you will send to attack. A fuel refinery to produce fuel for your units and, depending on how many attacks you want to send and how many units you have and how far away the player you are farming is, a fuel storage. Once you have built the fuel refinery you will have to wait for it to produce some fuel before you can attack, you can speed up this process by upgrading your fuel refinery. When choosing which unit you want to use to farm with there are a few things you should bare in mind. Hover are good if you have a lot of time as they have the largest cargo hold but take a long time to attack whereas if you are slightly shorter on time you would be better with air as they are very fast however you need to buy more too get as much trithium as you can with hover. Or you could choose land which is a mix between the two. It also takes some time for that unit purchase to become profitable. Hovers take 34 attacks, Land takes 50 attacks and Air take 63 attacks to pay for themselves.

So once you have chosen which type of unit you want to use and have built the factory required to purchase the units you are almost ready to start farming. Once built, the link to the factory will be found on the right hand side of the page at the top, click on this link and enter how many units you would like to purchase, this page also displays the stats of that particular unit.

Now that you have chosen, and bought, your units its time to send out an attack. When selecting a target you need to make sure they have a good amount of trithium. At this stage, look for someone with more than 30,000 trithium. When you think you have found a target send a scout to scout there defenses, if they have no defense or a small enough defense for you to destroy without causing yourself heavy losses then send in an attack (to learn how to efficiently destroy an enemy's units see the 'Destroying an enemy's units' section below).

You can only steal 15% of the enemy’s trithium per attack so to save fuel you need to calculate how many units to send at a time. For example if they have 30,000 trithium then 15% of 30,000 trithium is 4,500 so the maximum you can steal from this attack would be 4,500 trithium. Now look at how much trithium each of your units can hold and divide that by how much each unit can hold so if each of your units carry 300 trithium you can send 4500(15% of enemy’s total trithium)/ (divided by) 300(amount of trithium each unit carries) which is 15 so you can send in up to 15 units. Do this calculation again and attack again, then, when they don’t have much trithium left you can select another target since you can only attack a single target base 20 times per day.

Destroying an enemy's units
Another reason to attack someone would be to destroy their attack force. When a target has been selected to send units at, a scouting mission must be done to find out the enemy’s strength. Once the scouting mission is complete you will get an attack log similar to this:

Your force arrived at Player's base.

Your Force Consisted Of:

1 Scout

Enemy Force Consisted Of:

25 Head Hunters

A great battle raged between the two forces.

Your Force's Power:

Your force had 40 health.

Your force dealt out 20 unit damage

Enemy Force's Power:

Enemy force had 9000 health.

Enemy force dealt out 40 unit damage (5000 possible)!

You Lost:

1 Scout

Enemy Lost:

Nothing

Buildings Harmed:

None

Outcome:

The battle was unsuccessful.

Using this log you can see that the enemy force has 9000 HP and 5000 Attack points. So in order to kill all the enemy units your force must do 9000 damage. So if each of your units does 200 damage then you must send 45 (9000 divided by 200) units to destroy the entire enemy force.

You can also figure out how many of your units will be destroyed in the battle which will help you decide if the battle is worth it or not. In this example the enemy does 5000 damage so if each of your units has 600 hp then you would loose 8 units (5000 divided by 600 is 8.333). So the attack log would look like this:

Your force arrived at Player's base.

Your Force Consisted Of:

45 Retaliators

Enemy Force Consisted Of:

25 Head Hunters

A great battle raged between the two forces.

Your Force's Power:

Your force had 27 000 health.

Your force dealt out 9 000 unit damage!

Enemy Force's Power:

Enemy force had 9 000 health.

Enemy force dealt out 5 000 unit damage!

You Lost:

8 Retaliators

Enemy Lost:

25 Head Hunters

Buildings Harmed:

None

Outcome:

The battle was successful.

Bombers
Bombers can only be used to damage buildings; they will not attack or be attacked by any form of unit. The advantage of Bombers is that they do full damage to buildings instead of 10%, so each one deals 200 damage to a building. To build bombers you need to build a bomber runway which can be researched in the research center (requires level 3 Intelligence and a level 5 Air Factory). When attacking with bombers you do so the same way as you would with a normal unit. The only way to destroy bombers is with an Anti-air turret or by destroying someone’s bomber runway whilst their bombers are on it. Therefore it is important to, before you attack with bombers, scout the enemies base and target the Anti-Air Turret using the drop down box. Once the scout has finished its mission, if they have an anti-air turret, it will show in the building's harmed section of the attack log and if they don't have an anti-air turret it will say none under buildings harmed. If they have one then you will have to destroy it with normal units before you send bombers.

Destroying an enemy base
To destroy a base you must first destroy all the buildings in that base, this can be done using units or bombers. All units will do 10% of their attack points in damage to buildings, so if your unit has 100 attack points it will do 10 damage to a building. If you know how much HP a building you want to destroy has then you can calculate how many units to send if not then you can either send a scout to scout the HP of a specific building or you can just send all your units and see what happens. When you have a target to destroy and have scouted it you should know the health of a building:

Your force arrived at Somebody's base.

Your Force Consisted Of:

1 Scout

Enemy Force Consisted Of:

No One

You Lost:

Nothing

Enemy Lost:

Nothing

Buildings Harmed:

Radar Station took 2 damage of 2800hp.

Building has 2798hp remaining.

Buildings remaining: 13

Defense Field:

Defense Field prevented increased building damage.

Bonuses:

Your force successfully raided and stole 100 of 175,276.

Your force had no more cargo room to fit more trithium.

Outcome:

The battle was successful.

To destroy this persons radar station you need to do at least 2798 damage which is 27980 unit damage. So if each of your units does 1000 damage you would need to send 28 units to destroy the building (2798 divided by 100).

Important: If you want to destroy a specific building you need to remember to target it using the drop down menu.

Important buildings to consider
There are a few buildings which can prevent you from doing damage to an enemy base, a Shield Emitter, an Anti-Air Turret, Defense Field and the Repair Facility.

Shield Emitter: Whilst built it will prevent any damage being done to enemy buildings (does not stop bombers only normal units).

Anti-air turret: Whilst built it will destroy any bombers sent at that base before they do damage.

Defense field: If they don’t have a Defense Field then all you units and bombers will do 50% more building damage.

Repair Facility: Whilst built this building will repair any damaged buildings gradually over time.

Components
Components are equip able items which you can add to your units to give them bonus features or raise the units stats, all components can be bought from the components page although some of them need specific researches to be done before they can be equipped. There are four types of components and you can equip one of each to each vehicle: Shields: Give the unit extra HP and depending on which shield can give resistance to projectile, energy and particle damage.

Weapons: Give the unit extra attack points and can give bonus energy, particle and projectile damage.

Specials: This contains all the scanners available and also has some other specials.

Bots: When your units die in a battle any bots you equip will collect ore from the destroyed units and return it to your base which you can then sell for cash, the more advanced the bot, the more ore it collects.

The weapons can give extra bonuses with projectile, energy and particle damage. These are extra damages which will not be defended against by a normal shield but can only be stopped if the enemy unit has a shield which prevents that particular type of damage. So a shield with particle damage defense will prevent extra particle damage but a shield with bonus energy defense will not stop the particle damage. To equip components, go to the factory which makes the unit which you want to equip the component. Next to the name of the vehicle is a small white icon, click that and you will arrive at the unit design system screen. This screen shows the design and stats of the unit and below that there are drop downs menus where you can select any components you have bought, when you are happy with the components you have set to equip to the unit click the submit changes button. Important: Any components equipped cannot be re-used and can only be equipped to one type of unit, if you change the component on a particular vehicle the old component will be lost.

How to read an attack log
Your force arrived at Somebody's base. << This tells you who you are attacking.

Your Force Consisted Of: <<What units you have sent to attack.

1 Scout

Enemy Force Consisted Of: <<What units the enemy has defending.

No One

You Lost: <<What units you lost in the battle.

Nothing

Enemy Lost: <<What units the enemy lost in the battle.

Nothing

Buildings Harmed: <<Which buildings where harmed by your units

Radar Station took 2 damage of 2800hp.

Building has 2798hp remaining.

Buildings remaining: 13

Defense Field: <<Tells you whether or not the defense field prevented extra damage.

Defense Field prevented increased building damage.

Bonuses:

Your force successfully raided and stole 100 of 175,276.<< Tells you how much trithium you gained from the battle.

Your force had no more cargo room to fit more trithium.

Outcome: <<Tells you whether you won or lost, its determined by who dealt the most damage

The battle was successful.

Additional sections will be added to the attack log when you have certain components equipped.

Common terms
Metrol: One square on the map.

SPM: Seconds Per Metrol, how many seconds it takes for the unit to travel one metrol.

FPM: Fuel per metrol, how much fuel is required to travel one metrol on the map.

Q: Can I send bombers and normal units in one attack?
A: Yes, bombers and normal units can be sent together

Q: How many attacks can you do to each base?
A: You can do a maximum of 20 attacks in 24 hours to a particular base so it is important to make the most of every single one.

Q: How do you destroy a base?
A: When all the buildings it that base have been destroyed you send another attack and tick the attempt to destroy base box in the send attack screen, this can be done with any unit so a scout tends to be best as it is fastest and uses the least fuel.

Q: I just destroyed someone's base and went to attack another one of that player’s bases but it won’t let me, why?
A: Once you have destroyed someone's base they cannot be attacked by any player for the next 14 hours (or until they attack someone).

Q: I attacked someone who, according to the exploration page had no units but when I attacked they had a lot.
A: You can purchase defensive units which will only defend; these units do not show up on the exploration page, you have to scout the base to see them.

Q. Why did my units not attack the building I told them to?
A. The person either doesn't have that particular building, it has already been destroyed or its protected by a Shield Emitter