ZeldereX Online/Attacking

There are a few reasons why someone would want to attack: This tutorial explains the basics of all of these, as well as provides information on bombers and how to read attack logs.
 * Scouting enemy defenses
 * Farming for trithium
 * Destroying enemy units and bases

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.
 * 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 holds. These are the most expensive units, however their Cost/Damage ratio is the best of all non-defense units.

Attacking
To send an attack, go to the Exploration page, where 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 tell you how much fuel is required for this attack. You will also see an estimate of how long the attack will take and 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 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. Use a level one Air unit for scouting (the scout) as it is the cheapest. Later in the game higher level Air units can be useful as scouts, because they can be equipped with components which allow them to find out more information. At this stage of the game you only need a scout, and a Resource Scanner (requires level 1 Scanners researched) from the Components page as it is cheap and allows you to see the enemy resources. This component must be equipped to your scouts to work. 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).

Sample scouting log:  Your force arrived at < ENEMY >'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.

You can see from reading the log that the enemy has no units, so it is safe to attack.

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 their 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: 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 the refinery. When choosing which unit you want to use to farm with, there are a few things you should bear in mind. Hover units are good if you have a lot of time as they have the largest cargo hold but take a long time to attack. If you are slightly shorter on time you would be better with Air as they are very fast, however you need to buy more to 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 the purchase of a unit to become profitable. Hovers take 34 attacks, Land takes 50 attacks and Air take 63 attacks to pay for themselves.
 * 1) A unit factory (Hover, Land or Air) to buy the units you will send to attack.
 * 2) A Fuel Refinery to produce fuel for your units.
 * 3) A Fuel Storage depending on how many attacks you want to send, how many units you have, and how far away the enemy is.

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, it's 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 their 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.

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 the enemy has 30,000 trithium then 4,500 trithium (15% of 30,000) is the maximum you can steal in one attack. Take this number and divide it by the cargo capacity of your units. If they can carry 300 trithium, you can send 15 units (4,500 / 300). Recalculate the number of units to send on each successive attack. If you have multiple enemies to attack, it is not efficient to send units carrying partial loads. Whenever the unit cargo capacity does not evenly divide into the max stealable amount, send the last unit on a different attack where it can be fully utilized.


 * Total trithium stolen: 28,423
 * Total units sent: 104
 * Trithium per unit: 273.3


 * Total trithium stolen: 27,900
 * Total units sent: 93
 * Trithium per unit: 300

Using the first method, you would spend fuel on 11 more units to steal 523 more trithium, which is less than can be carried by two units.

Destroying enemy units
Another reason to attack someone would be to destroy their attack force. When a target has been selected for attack, a scouting mission must be done to find out the enemy’s strength. If you plan your attack only according to the information on the Exploration page, you run the risk of unwittingly attacking heavily defended enemy. You can purchase defensive units which do not show up on the Exploration page, and can only be seen by sending a scouting mission. Once the scouting mission is complete, you will get an attack log similar to this:  Your force arrived at < ENEMY >'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 9,000 health.
 * Enemy force dealt out 40 unit damage (5,000 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 9,000 HP and 5,000 Attack Points. So in order to kill all the enemy units, your force must do 9,000 damage. If each of your units does 200 damage, then you must send 45 (9,000 / 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 5,000 damage so if each of your units has 600 HP, you would lose 8 units (5,000 / 600).

The attack log would look like this:

 Your force arrived at < ENEMY >'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.

Destroying enemy bases
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. If you know how much HP a building you want to destroy has, then you can calculate how many units to send. If you don't know, 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 all buildings have been destroyed, send another attack and check 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. Once you have destroyed someone's base they cannot be attacked at any of their bases by any player for the next 14 hours (or until they attack someone).

When you have a target to destroy and have scouted it, you should know the health of a building:

 Your force arrived at < ENEMY >'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 2,800 HP.
 * Building has 2,798 HP 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 the Radar Station, you need to do at least 2,798 damage, which is 27,980 unit damage. If each of your units does 1,000 damage you would need to send 28 units to destroy the building (2,798 / 100 and rounded up). If you targeted a building, but it was not destroyed there a few possible explanations. The person either doesn't have that particular building, it has already been destroyed or it's protected by a Shield Emitter.

Important targets
Consider taking out the buildings that can prevent you from doing damage to an enemy base first.
 * Shield Emitter: Prevents any damage being done to enemy buildings (does not stop bombers only normal units).
 * Anti-Air Turret: Destroys any bombers sent at that base before they do damage.
 * Defense Field: Protects buildings from 50% of damage.
 * Repair Facility: Repairs any damaged buildings gradually over time.

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. Bombers and normal units can be sent together on the same attack.

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, before you attack with bombers, it is important to scout the enemy's base and target the Anti-Air Turret using the drop down box. Once the scout has finished its mission, if the enemy has an Anti-Air Turret, it will show in the building's Harmed section of the attack log. 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.

Components
Components are equipable items which you can add to your units to give them bonus features or raise their 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: Gives the unit extra HP and, depending on the shield, can give resistance to projectile, energy or particle damage.
 * Weapons: Gives the unit extra Attack Points and can give bonus energy, particle and projectile damage.
 * Specials: All the scanners available and some other special components.
 * Bots: Collects ore from your destroyed units and returns it to your base to be sold for cash. More advanced the bots collect more ore.

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 be stopped if the enemy unit has a shield which prevents that particular type of damage. 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 you want to equip. Next to the name of the vehicle is a small white icon. Click it and you will arrive at the Unit Design System screen. This screen shows the design and stats of the unit with drop downs menus below where you can select any components you have bought. When you are happy with the components you have equipped to the unit, click the Submit Changes button.

Attack log
An explanation of how to read the attack log is provided.  Your force arrived at < ENEMY >'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, 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.