Post by Zensi on Aug 9, 2017 22:52:30 GMT
I've made a previous post about how to keep your cups, thinking that would be enough. However, too many people keep saying they can't do better. The truth is, you can. You don't have to be the best ship; you just need to be better than the ones you find, and be smarter about how you do things.
The main reasons for battling are:
Farming, testing and increasing your cup count are all important parts of making your ship stronger, but the ideal play strategy will be different depending on which goal you're trying to achieve at the moment. When our alliance is in a push, your main concern is getting more cups, more cups and more cups. This also means you have to lose fewer cups, so you need to figure what to do for this purpose. A strategy focused on gaining cups will help you achieve the other two goals, just to a lesser degree, however this post's main interest will be how to gain cups to support our alliance.
Have a strong ship.
This guide isn't really about how to make your ship stronger - it's about how to fight as efficiently as possible to earn trophies with the ship you already have. In part this is because you should be using a different play strategy when you're working hard to improve your ship versus working hard to increase your trophy count, so one guide can't really cover both. However, if you want to climb in the rankings, having a strong ship is essential. Most players find that they eventually reach a point where they can't seem to climb any higher without improving their ship, no matter how much effort they put into grinding. Once you've reached that point it may be time to pause and think about whether there are simple things that you can do to make your ship more competitive. Small changes can sometimes make a big difference, so make sure you're paying attention to every aspect of your ship. You should be considering all of the following:
One of the most important factors in building a strong ship is your repair crew. In the end, winning a battle depends on keeping your ship running longer than your opponents' ship, and crew are what make that happen. You need two components for this: good crew and good AI. Your crew will be the biggest factor in limiting you and determining which opponents you can attack. Just because your ship is level 10 or 11 doesn't mean you can take down a top 100 ship, especially if you don't have the crew. Your crew needs to be at least Epic or better. You also need to work on them to become strong enough to sustain your strategy. This includes training and toys, as mentioned above.
Once you have a strong ship there are two basic components of climbing in the trophy rankings: earning cups and keeping the cups that you've already earned.
Earning cups.
The saying is, "You don't have to run faster than the tiger, just faster than those around you." You don't need to win against every ship that shows up in PVP, or even a majority of them. You just need to be able to beat the ships that you attack. That is where the smarter part comes in - you need to be able to know against whom to battle, judging their strength by looking at them. There's a lot that you can tell just from looking at the outside of the hull. Ship level is the most obvious thing you'll want to look for, followed by alliance affiliation. Even the best alliances house weak ships, and there are some very strong ships that aren't affiliated with a top alliance, but generally speaking alliance is a very strong indicator of how difficult a ship is likely to be. In addition, pay attention to which weapons are being used, how leveled up they are and where they're placed.
Once you have a good enough ship, you need to battle smarter. You can do this by knowing which ships are safe to attack. You need to learn what your ship can do; hopefully you've already got an idea of your ship's capabilities. No matter what strategy you develop your ship will have strengths and weaknesses, and it's important to learn what your weaknesses are. Its limitations can be in terms of which weapon types your ship fails against, or a weapon level that it can't compete against yet. Maybe your ship can take most others down, but there are certain ones you can't; for those ships you need to learn their names so that you can avoid attacking them when you're grinding for cups. There will always be a ship that can beat you; not even a top player is able to defeat every ship.
The higher you climb, the more difficult it will be to find ships that are safe to attack. Once you reach the point where they are the minority, you need to start really evaluating an unfamiliar ship before you attack and avoid the temptation to attack a ship that you can't beat because you're tired of looking for one that you can. It's tempting to settle when you're passing up one ship after another but it's not worth it.
Keeping the cups that you've earned.
Use a bridge. Battling smarter also means losing as few cups as possible once you've earned them, and the bridge is a great help when it comes to this. When you see that a battle might not go your way, consider pressing escape. Be ready to bolt when you're sure you're going to lose or when there are only a few seconds before you time out. You can keep the escape window open during most of the battle and not press the confirm button until that last moment. However, remember that it takes a little time to register even after you've hit confirm, so don't wait too long or it might be too late. The bridge also gives you a chance to prevent defense losses - another ship escaping a battle they initiated against you. These are a virtual loss, since you didn't actually lose any of the cups you already have, but they still represent a missed opportunity to gain trophies.
Plan your play time. Another handy tactic is learning to ride out your immunities. You might get attacked by a much higher ship and end up only losing minimal cups. This is a good thing! You've just lucked your way into what we call a cheap immunity. At the cost of just a few cups you've earned 8 hours of not having to worry about being attacked. You need to know when to battle and when to just ride the immunity out, especially if it means losing more cups than you could have gained. If you battle when you can't keep your idevice open to prevent attacks, it's easy to end up losing more cups in defense than you're earning from your battles, so don't break your immunity when you only have a few minutes. A good rule of thumb that many players use is to only break their immunity when they know they'll be able to earn back at least twice as many cups as they lost in their last defense or in an average lost defense. As an alternative you might want to consider setting a reasonable goal when you begin to grind and keep going until you reach it. You can battle whenever you want when you are playing for other reasons (gathering resources/xp or testing your ship), since losing cups isn't important for those. However, when you're trying to climb, if the chances are that you will lose 20 cups from an attacker and only gain 1-2 per battle it's better to avoid short play sessions. If you are likely to lose 10-20, but can make more than that in the time you're planning to spend grinding, go ahead and break immunity.
Use immunities. Another great tool for preserving cups is the immunity items; these allow you to battle when you have the time and rest when you don't. The 12 hour immunities are usually most useful when you're grinding cups for a tournament. Ideally you can fight or keep your idevice running for 12 hours, then take the chance to rest for 12 hours after that. Even if you're not able to stay logged in for 12 hours of the day, by planning your PSS time in advance and using 12 hour immunities strategically you should be able to limit your lost defenses to one or at most two per day. So stock up on 12 hour immunities, at least 15. This way you can start really pushing after the middle of the month. However, you can also make a lot of cups (freebies from divers) in the first few days, so you might not want to use immunities at the beginning of the month. Leaving your ship open to attacks at the beginning of the month also allows you to get a limited damage test. You can get an idea of how your ship does against stronger ships, and usually at a lower cost than if you were doing the attacking.
Know when to walk away. One of the hardest lessons for many players to learn is when to walk away for a while. Trying to grind when you're tired, frustrated or distracted can easily do more harm than good. When you've just lost hours worth of grinding to a tough ship it can be tempting to push even harder to earn them back, but it's usually a bad idea, since playing while angry and frustrated can quickly lead to even more losses. Even if you can't use a 12 hour immunity or leave your device open while you take a break, losing a few cups in a defense while you take a break to clear your head is better than losing a lot of cups to angry grinding.
Start early. You're probably familiar with the standard strategy of upgrading your ship at the beginning of the month and climbing at the end. This is what many players do, including many top players, but to really push your ship to the limit you might want to take a different approach. The early days of the month are actually a great time to gain cups. Because so many other ships are upgrading you can get away with attacking players that you couldn't beat when they're in top fighting condition, and fewer players grinding means that there are more juicy targets available for you to attack. For various reasons the matchups you find at the end of the month will tend to be more difficult and pay out fewer trophies than the ones that you find at the beginning. It may be obvious, but starting early in the month also gives you more time to climb; grinding to the top isn't something that you can do overnight, and the more time you devote to it the better off you'll be. You may have noticed that ARMADA doesn't push every month; usually we have a push month followed by a rest month. In addition to avoiding the burnout that comes from nonstop grinding, this is intended to give our members time to work on improving their ships during the rest month so that they can focus on gaining cups during the push month.
So how does all this translates into a strategy?
Fight early – If you are under 5k, you can start your push even during the previous month. If you are over 5k start on day 1, don't wait until later. The reasons are many
Fight well - we are pushing so you want wins. Sometimes you just can't help it, and need to lock horns. However, the rest of the time, battle smartly.
Don't lose
Thanks to JY2P and Yetta for their writing
The main reasons for battling are:
- Gathering resources or XP (farming)
- Increasing your cups
- Testing your ship
- Just for the fun of destroying thing, but we aren't talking about therapy here
Farming, testing and increasing your cup count are all important parts of making your ship stronger, but the ideal play strategy will be different depending on which goal you're trying to achieve at the moment. When our alliance is in a push, your main concern is getting more cups, more cups and more cups. This also means you have to lose fewer cups, so you need to figure what to do for this purpose. A strategy focused on gaining cups will help you achieve the other two goals, just to a lesser degree, however this post's main interest will be how to gain cups to support our alliance.
Have a strong ship.
This guide isn't really about how to make your ship stronger - it's about how to fight as efficiently as possible to earn trophies with the ship you already have. In part this is because you should be using a different play strategy when you're working hard to improve your ship versus working hard to increase your trophy count, so one guide can't really cover both. However, if you want to climb in the rankings, having a strong ship is essential. Most players find that they eventually reach a point where they can't seem to climb any higher without improving their ship, no matter how much effort they put into grinding. Once you've reached that point it may be time to pause and think about whether there are simple things that you can do to make your ship more competitive. Small changes can sometimes make a big difference, so make sure you're paying attention to every aspect of your ship. You should be considering all of the following:
- Develop an overall strategy; think carefully about how everything on your ship should be working together to achieve a common goal. Having a strong ship is about more than just buying fancy crew and jamming in as many weapons as possible.
- Upgrade rooms and level crew to the max allowed for your hull level. Don't ignore the rooms and crew that are sitting in your inventory. A room that doesn't seem to be very useful now might be the key to your success a few months from now, but that won't be an easy option if it's still at level 1 when you decide you're ready to use it.
- Never stop thinking about how you can improve your crew and weapon AI. This is both one of the most difficult and one of the most important components of building a strong ship. We have some real AI experts at ARMADA, so don't make the mistake of trying to figure it all out on your own. If you're not already familiar with Worf's intermediate repair AI guide and AI Bible, invest some time in looking them over. If you're not able to write AI on your own that performs better than Worf's intermediate repair AI, that's what you should be using.
- Give careful consideration to every aspect of your ship's layout. This is one of the areas where little details can make a surprisingly big difference. If it's been a while since you got feedback about your layout, consider visiting the workshop and asking for help.
- Select and stage your crew carefully. Find a good balance between different types of crew and stage them on your ship based on where their skills can be used most effectively. Our crew table with skill indices can be a big help.
- ALWAYS have research going in your lab. Focus on research that will benefit your current layout the most, but also find time to research other things. Adaptability is an important part of being a competitive player.
- Watch your replays, and post them in alliance chat for other people to watch. Keep in mind that there's often more to be learned from a loss than a win, so avoid the temptation to only post replays of your greatest triumphs.
- Don't forget the extras like equipment, gym training and borrowed crew.
These tips may seem pretty simple, but a surprising number of players ignore one or more of these issues. Don't make that mistake.
One of the most important factors in building a strong ship is your repair crew. In the end, winning a battle depends on keeping your ship running longer than your opponents' ship, and crew are what make that happen. You need two components for this: good crew and good AI. Your crew will be the biggest factor in limiting you and determining which opponents you can attack. Just because your ship is level 10 or 11 doesn't mean you can take down a top 100 ship, especially if you don't have the crew. Your crew needs to be at least Epic or better. You also need to work on them to become strong enough to sustain your strategy. This includes training and toys, as mentioned above.
Once you have a strong ship there are two basic components of climbing in the trophy rankings: earning cups and keeping the cups that you've already earned.
Earning cups.
The saying is, "You don't have to run faster than the tiger, just faster than those around you." You don't need to win against every ship that shows up in PVP, or even a majority of them. You just need to be able to beat the ships that you attack. That is where the smarter part comes in - you need to be able to know against whom to battle, judging their strength by looking at them. There's a lot that you can tell just from looking at the outside of the hull. Ship level is the most obvious thing you'll want to look for, followed by alliance affiliation. Even the best alliances house weak ships, and there are some very strong ships that aren't affiliated with a top alliance, but generally speaking alliance is a very strong indicator of how difficult a ship is likely to be. In addition, pay attention to which weapons are being used, how leveled up they are and where they're placed.
Once you have a good enough ship, you need to battle smarter. You can do this by knowing which ships are safe to attack. You need to learn what your ship can do; hopefully you've already got an idea of your ship's capabilities. No matter what strategy you develop your ship will have strengths and weaknesses, and it's important to learn what your weaknesses are. Its limitations can be in terms of which weapon types your ship fails against, or a weapon level that it can't compete against yet. Maybe your ship can take most others down, but there are certain ones you can't; for those ships you need to learn their names so that you can avoid attacking them when you're grinding for cups. There will always be a ship that can beat you; not even a top player is able to defeat every ship.
The higher you climb, the more difficult it will be to find ships that are safe to attack. Once you reach the point where they are the minority, you need to start really evaluating an unfamiliar ship before you attack and avoid the temptation to attack a ship that you can't beat because you're tired of looking for one that you can. It's tempting to settle when you're passing up one ship after another but it's not worth it.
Keeping the cups that you've earned.
Use a bridge. Battling smarter also means losing as few cups as possible once you've earned them, and the bridge is a great help when it comes to this. When you see that a battle might not go your way, consider pressing escape. Be ready to bolt when you're sure you're going to lose or when there are only a few seconds before you time out. You can keep the escape window open during most of the battle and not press the confirm button until that last moment. However, remember that it takes a little time to register even after you've hit confirm, so don't wait too long or it might be too late. The bridge also gives you a chance to prevent defense losses - another ship escaping a battle they initiated against you. These are a virtual loss, since you didn't actually lose any of the cups you already have, but they still represent a missed opportunity to gain trophies.
Plan your play time. Another handy tactic is learning to ride out your immunities. You might get attacked by a much higher ship and end up only losing minimal cups. This is a good thing! You've just lucked your way into what we call a cheap immunity. At the cost of just a few cups you've earned 8 hours of not having to worry about being attacked. You need to know when to battle and when to just ride the immunity out, especially if it means losing more cups than you could have gained. If you battle when you can't keep your idevice open to prevent attacks, it's easy to end up losing more cups in defense than you're earning from your battles, so don't break your immunity when you only have a few minutes. A good rule of thumb that many players use is to only break their immunity when they know they'll be able to earn back at least twice as many cups as they lost in their last defense or in an average lost defense. As an alternative you might want to consider setting a reasonable goal when you begin to grind and keep going until you reach it. You can battle whenever you want when you are playing for other reasons (gathering resources/xp or testing your ship), since losing cups isn't important for those. However, when you're trying to climb, if the chances are that you will lose 20 cups from an attacker and only gain 1-2 per battle it's better to avoid short play sessions. If you are likely to lose 10-20, but can make more than that in the time you're planning to spend grinding, go ahead and break immunity.
Use immunities. Another great tool for preserving cups is the immunity items; these allow you to battle when you have the time and rest when you don't. The 12 hour immunities are usually most useful when you're grinding cups for a tournament. Ideally you can fight or keep your idevice running for 12 hours, then take the chance to rest for 12 hours after that. Even if you're not able to stay logged in for 12 hours of the day, by planning your PSS time in advance and using 12 hour immunities strategically you should be able to limit your lost defenses to one or at most two per day. So stock up on 12 hour immunities, at least 15. This way you can start really pushing after the middle of the month. However, you can also make a lot of cups (freebies from divers) in the first few days, so you might not want to use immunities at the beginning of the month. Leaving your ship open to attacks at the beginning of the month also allows you to get a limited damage test. You can get an idea of how your ship does against stronger ships, and usually at a lower cost than if you were doing the attacking.
Know when to walk away. One of the hardest lessons for many players to learn is when to walk away for a while. Trying to grind when you're tired, frustrated or distracted can easily do more harm than good. When you've just lost hours worth of grinding to a tough ship it can be tempting to push even harder to earn them back, but it's usually a bad idea, since playing while angry and frustrated can quickly lead to even more losses. Even if you can't use a 12 hour immunity or leave your device open while you take a break, losing a few cups in a defense while you take a break to clear your head is better than losing a lot of cups to angry grinding.
Start early. You're probably familiar with the standard strategy of upgrading your ship at the beginning of the month and climbing at the end. This is what many players do, including many top players, but to really push your ship to the limit you might want to take a different approach. The early days of the month are actually a great time to gain cups. Because so many other ships are upgrading you can get away with attacking players that you couldn't beat when they're in top fighting condition, and fewer players grinding means that there are more juicy targets available for you to attack. For various reasons the matchups you find at the end of the month will tend to be more difficult and pay out fewer trophies than the ones that you find at the beginning. It may be obvious, but starting early in the month also gives you more time to climb; grinding to the top isn't something that you can do overnight, and the more time you devote to it the better off you'll be. You may have noticed that ARMADA doesn't push every month; usually we have a push month followed by a rest month. In addition to avoiding the burnout that comes from nonstop grinding, this is intended to give our members time to work on improving their ships during the rest month so that they can focus on gaining cups during the push month.
So how does all this translates into a strategy?
Fight early – If you are under 5k, you can start your push even during the previous month. If you are over 5k start on day 1, don't wait until later. The reasons are many
- people donate cups early
- they are upgrading making their ships easier
- they are farming and not set for a fight
- you gain more cups early on, as the end of the month it is 1 or 2 cups win
Fight well - we are pushing so you want wins. Sometimes you just can't help it, and need to lock horns. However, the rest of the time, battle smartly.
- Attack ships that you expect to win, or keep ready to escape
- Keep the app running all the time, you will get attacked if you jump to other apps too long.
- Don't battle when you only have 5 minutes to be online. You can fight a battle, and leave the app running. Return 30 minutes later and do another battle.
- An exception is when your ship is strong enough, that you get a ton of defends. Then you gain several good wins. Sadly my ship never gets good defends and I win more battling.
Don't lose
- Ride your immunity
- Pop a 12 hour daily. This gives you time to think you have a life and return to your duties when you have the time
- Don't be upgrading, you won't be your most competitive if you do. Upgrade on the last week, if you done as good as you can. Pop a 7 day immunity and take a break
Thanks to JY2P and Yetta for their writing