Guide to Defenses, Construction time, and Turtling.

Introduction

This is a simple guide to Defense in Galaxy Empires. Since the dawn of RTS gaming there have been players that excelled in defense. These players were called “turtles.” I’m going to explain a little about turtling, but before I do there’s some terminology we need to get out of the way first.

Common Terms:

• Fodder is any unit that is inexpensive and that can be quickly built in bulk to be sacrificed in protection of your stronger units.
  
• Heavy Armor is a unit with a lot of firepower, generally the ones that you want protected by the fodder.
  
• Shields are units that cannot be classified as fodder or heavy armor. Will elaborate more on that later.
  
• AM is Attack Multiplier
  
• RL is Rocket Launcher
  
• LL is Light Laser
  
• HL is Heavy Laser
  
• IC is Ion Canon
  
• MK is Mark Two Canon
  
• PC is Plasma Canon
  
• SSD or SS is Small Shield Dome or Small Shield
  
• LSD or LS is Large Shield Dome or Large Shield
  

There are three defense units to list under “Shields.” These are, of course, the Small Shield Dome, the Large Shield Dome, and, contrary to popular belief, the Ion Canon. IC’s do not deal a lot of damage but they are also not particularly cheap. They do have a very large amount of Shield Strength which is why they are classified as Shields. 20 of these is the equivalent of another Large Shield Dome.



Everything in Galaxy Empires takes time to build. We decrease the time this stuff takes by upgrading Robotics for buildings, Shipyard for Ships, and the Nanite Factory for both.

For each level of shipyard built, it decreases the time it takes to build your defenses. I believe the formula for how much the next level of shipyard will reduce your defense's build-time is...

Code:

R=2T/(S+1)
Thanks Test(mars) for correcting the formula.

Where "T" is the base time it takes to build a specific unit of defense without a shipyard or nanite factory; "S" is the level of the shipyard you're building; and "R" is the resultant time after the shipyard level and time are applied to the equation.

For each level of Nanite Factory built the time it takes to build a specific unit of defense is reduced by one-half (please correct me if I‘m wrong). The formula for the reduction of the time it takes to build a specific unit of defense is....

Code:

T/(2^N)=R
Thanks Test(mars) for correcting the formula.

Where "T" is the base time it takes to build a specific unit of defense without a nanite factory or shipyard.; "N" is the level of nanite factory you're planning to build; and "R" is the resultant time after the nanite factory level and time are applied to the equation.

With both the nanite factory and shipyard factored together the resulting equation is…

Code:

R=(2T/((S+1)*(2^N)))
Thanks Test(mars) for correcting the formula.

Where "T" is the base time it takes to build a specific unit of defense; "S" is the level of shipyard you are building; "N" is the level of nanite factory you are building; and "R" is the resultant time after the nanite factory level, shipyard level, and time are applied to the equation.

note: One of the most valuable assets of defenses is the Engineer which keeps ½ of all the defenses you would normally have lost in a battle, even if you are completely annihilated. The Admiral also reduces ship/def unit construction time by 10%

~Stats~

Some other important statistics are Attack Multiplier, shield strength, and attack strength.

Attack Multiplier or AM can be thought of as a multiplier. For example if a unit has an AM of 2, that unit deals 2x as much damage as usual to the specified target. Another way to think of it is as firing multiple times in succession rapidly…but that’s a mouth full ^^

Here is a list of the defensive units Name, Strength(STR) Shield(SH) and Attack(ATT)
Strength, is the amount of damage that unit can take before being destroyed. This can be increased by researching many levels of Strenght Technology(who would‘ve guessed?). For each level of Strength Technology researched, 10% of the base strength is added to the total. So when you reach Strength Technology level 10, you have the full 100% of the base strength added to itself.


Shield Strength is the amount of shields a specific unit of defense has. Shields act the exact same as armor, however, shields absorb damage. When shields absorb damage, it reduces the amount of damage done to your defense's armor. Shields shutdown after they absorb their max capacity in damage, but are fully regenerated for each round of the defenses that are left after that round. Large Shield Dome and Small Shield Dome do not regenerate. Shield Strength can be increased by researching multiple levels of Shielding technology. Just like strength technology, shielding technology adds 10% of the base shield strength to the total shield strength.

Attack Strength is the amount of damage that can be dealt by one unit of a specified defense type. The attack strength can be increased by researching levels of weapons technology. Just like Strength Technology and Shielding Technology, Weapons Technology adds 10% of the base attack strength to the current total attack strength for each level researched.

From Humble Beginnings

Rocket Launchers are fodder and as good a place as any to start when it comes to setting up a turtle. They only cost Metal which is useful when you’re low on crystal and/or gas. It takes many thousands of these to be effective. Nevertheless, they are a solid foundation for any starting turtle.

Ships stronger than Heavy Fighters will slice through Rocket Launchers with no problem. When you have your foundation set up and a self-sustaining amount of crystal metal and gas it’s time to go with Light Lasers. Light Lasers are very cheap and a nice deterrent against farmers LL also have a high attack power in regards to their cost in resources, building several thousands of these will not only offer you cheap fodder but also more than double your efficiency in attack power. As you can see by this chart, when comparing stats per resource LL actually fair pretty well compared to the bigger units in way of Attack Power:



If you cannot see the above image properly due to your screen resolution simply click the image.

At this point, however, you have thousands of LL and thousands of RL, to deter farmers but you’re attracting something much more fierce…. Fleet Hunters. Fleet Hunters search the galaxy for anything that makes debris and crashes it just for the fun of it regardless of if they will profit from it or not.

To prevent that from happening you must build Ion Cannons, IC have a very high amount of Shield Strength. Every 20 Ion Canons is equal to 1 Large Shield Dome. When you have 20,000 Ion Canons the enemy fleet is going to have a tough time breaking through your shield network. These units may cost quite a bit but they are essential to turtling. If you don’t build Ion Canons you will not survive as a turtle.

Now that you have a good shield network and plenty of fodder you need something to help shoot down the would be fleet hunters. Unfortunately those light lasers are going to get weaker and weaker after each round as more and more of them get destroyed. Thankfully while they’re being destroyed, your next weapon of choice will not even be hit yet and that would be the MK 2 canons. Two MK2s is all it takes to knock out a battle ship and it only takes 3 to take out a dreadnought.

As time goes on you will now only get stronger and stronger. The longer you avoid getting hit by a fleet crasher, the safer you’ll become. Eventually you will find yourself with 4x the amount ot MK2 canons as the average player has Dreadnoughts on account of MK2 canons being more cost effective.

Now it’s time to make yourself all but invincible by building the ever expensive Plasma Canons. PC’s are expensive, take a while to build, and if you don’t have a good defensive network already in place they will become easily overwhelmed by all the Fodder in a good fleeter’s fleet.. Nothing, however, has an Attack Multiplier against a PC and they deal massive amounts of damage with each single shot. One Plasma Canon can take out 4 dreadnoughts by itself. It only takes 2 PC to destroy a destroyer. It’s virtually impossible to build these in bulk due to their price, however, and that is why, if the enemy sends a lot of fodder, these big guys wont be able to compensate and will just become overwhelmed.

The point is, there is no ultimate defense unit. You need them all in order to create a strong defensive network. The only thing I would not build is Heavy Lasers because they have identical stats to the Light Laser and are less cost effective. 4 LL match 1 HL pretty easily and there’s been many times when I’ve been able to build 5 or 6 times more LL than HL. RL and LL add extreme amounts of Attack Power per Resource when compared to other units and they work as fodder to protect your stronger units, Ion Canons add extreme amounts of shield to help absorb damage before it reaches your fodder or other units, MK 2 canons have the strongest strength per resource and, with enough nebula farming, build in bulk. Plasma Canons are the strongest units you can get in terms of per unit but it takes a long time to build enough of them to stand up against anything. It is a never-ending cycle of balance. Everything in the list (except HL) is needed for something.

This guide is not yet complete, the formulas listed above are approximate and will not give an EXACT value.