Unit Ability

Unit abilities are certain things that the player's units can do during battle and provides the player an advantage. Unit abilities start at level 1 and can be upgraded using thorium and oil with their level cap at levels 10, 20, or 30 depending on if the ability is a minor, normal, or major ability respectively. All abilities of the same kind behave identically to each other when they are at the same level no matter if the ability is minor, normal, nor major. The exception to this is type-specific block where its minor variant at level 10 has the same probability of blocking compared to its intermediate variant at level 14. Upgrading the oil silo is very important for higher ability levels, as costs rise very quickly after a certain point. Some abilities, such as ricochet, do not have a certain variant available.

Unit abilities can be considered to be in one of two categories, offense and passive. Offense abilities have a chance of triggering when attacking enemy units while passive abilities have a chance of triggering when something happens to the player's own units, namely dying. All units can have up to three abilities unlocked for every two ranks, rounded down.

Note - All numbers and statistics listed are when an ability is upgraded to its maximum level. They are listed in the format minor ability value / intermediate ability value / major ability value.

Note - Several abilities have a variant which only triggers against a certain unit type, usually the unit type the unit receives a manufacturer boost against. These abilities are the same when compared to its non-unit type specific counterpart, but have higher intensities. In the case of stun and blind, the duration is increased. In the case of block, the probability is increased. Italicized abilities have a variant that can only target specific unit types.

For visuals on how abilities and their effects look in-game, see Unit Abilities Gallery.

## Offense Abilities

**Notes**
* Deterrence and credit drain are both called credit drain revenge in-game. Since they have differing stats, icons, and trigger conditions in the game, this page uses deterrence and credit drain as a way to differentiate the two abilities.
* Strengthen and frenzy are both called strengthen in-game. Since they have different trigger conditions and icons in the game, this page uses strengthen and frenzy as a way to differentiate the two abilities.
* Most non-artillery units have a "prediction" system in which if the next attack would kill the enemy unit, all other friendly units will target other enemy units or start moving if none are present in order to not waste shots. This prediction does not account for damage modification from critical hits, poison, strengthen, armor, weaken, block, and blind.
* Poison damage depends on how much damage the unit has done to the enemy, rather than the listed damage value in the unit's stats. For example, if a unit lands critical hits and poisons an enemy unit at the same time, poison damage is increased correspondingly. Similarly, a weakened unit will deal less poison damage than normal.
* If a unit shoots multiple shots in a single attack, poison damage is split in between all the shots. This may result in units not doing full poison damage because they were killed before landing all shots.
	+ This property also lets units poison multiple enemies if they redirect their volley towards a second target.
* Deterrence and bounty only target specific unit types. There are no variants of these abilities that apply to all enemy units killed.
* Deterrence requires the unit with the deterrence ability to land the killing blow on an enemy in order to trigger, unlike other abilities with the property "x% chance when an enemy unit is killed."
* Splash damage from explosive rounds are affected when a unit is weakened or has a strength boost since it depends on the damage done to the enemy unit. However, splash damage is not reduced for nearby enemies if the target enemy reduces its damage taken with armor.
* Any ability with a duration, such as poison or weaken, cannot be applied a second time from the same unit while the current status effect is still active.
	+ Similarly, a unit cannot gain a second strength boost while under the effects of an existing boost.
	+ Enemy units can however, be affected by the same status effect if it is inflicted by two different units.
* The size of the triangles sprayed out by the bounty ability varies based on the size of the bounty. Infantry units spraying out triangles can be difficult to see as they are very small and can easily be blocked out by other visual effects such as explosions.
* Some on-hit abilities, such as critical strike and poison, can affect multiple enemies if the unit shoots multiple shots and redirects their volley towards a second target. Others, such as stun and blind, can only affect enemies with the first shot, e.g. not possible to stun or blind multiple enemies.
* Unit abilities never trigger when attacking defense towers nor have any effect on them with the exception of taking increased/decreased damage from strengthened/weakened units. Defense towers capable of attacking enemy units also never trigger any abilities, meaning defense towers are a safe way to dispose of units with upon death effects. Enemies killed with defense towers do not count towards any abilities that can trigger upon an enemy death, such as strengthen.
* Credit drain is currently only available on the Gungnir.
* Ricochet is not available on infantry and air units.
* Weaken is not available on infantry except for the Ocelot and Keto.
* If explosive rounds and ricochet are paired together on a unit such as the Dani and both trigger at the same time, each enemy unit hit triggers the explosive splash damage another time, dealing large damage to the entire enemy army if several units are all hit with the ricocheting shot.
* If weaken and ricochet are paired together on a unit such as the Apollo, all units hit by the ricocheting shot have a chance to be weakened, allowing a unit to weaken enemies that are behind cover.
* If critical strike and explosive rounds are paired together on a unit, what happens if both abilities trigger is inconsistent. It appears that a critical hit would not affect the amount of splash damage done with the exception of the Durendal and the Sagitta. Splash damage from their explosive rounds are increased based on how much extra damage the critical strike ability provides, dealing massive damage to entire armies with a single shot.
* When a unit is freshly deployed, it has a few seconds of immunity from being indirectly affected by enemy abilities such as explosive rounds or the effects of mines. However, this does not hold true if they are the ones who triggered the mine.
* Abilities that trigger on hit and have a duration such as stun cannot be reapplied by the same unit while the enemy is still suffering from its effects. For example, a unit capable of weaken cannot weaken the same enemy unit while said enemy is still weakened from its attacker. However, multiple units can affect the same target at once with the same status effect, such as two units inflicting poison on the same enemy unit.

## Passive Abilities

**Notes**
* Block and anti-missile ray are both called block in-game. Since they have differing stats and trigger conditions, this page uses block and anti-missile ray as a way to differentiate the two abilities.
* All non-artillery units have a "prediction" system in which if the next attack would kill the enemy unit, all other friendly units will target other enemy units or start moving if none are present in order to not waste shots. This prediction does not account for damage modification from critical hits, poison, strengthen, armor, weaken, block, and blind.
* If multiple units fire at the exact same time on the same enemy and the enemy unit's block triggers, it is possible for all shots to be blocked.
* The size of the triangles sprayed out by the death refund ability varies based on the size of the dying unit. Infantry units spraying out triangles can be difficult to see as they are very small and can easily be blocked out by other visual effects such as explosions.
* Unit abilities never trigger when attacking defense towers nor have any effect on them with the exception of taking increased/decreased damage from strengthened/weakened units. Defense towers capable of attacking enemy units also never trigger any abilities, meaning defense towers are a safe way to dispose of units with upon death effects.
* The strength boost from the frenzy ability cannot be triggered a second time while a boost is still currently active.
* Frenzy only exists as a minor ability except on the Chaos and Ironflag.
* Final revenge is not available on air units except for the Sting.
* Death refund is not available on air units except for the Sting and Lepus.
* Ordinance is only available on air units except for the Agni.
* Shield is not available on artillery units except for the Durendal.
* Shield is not available on infantry units.
* Armor is not available on infantry units except for the Astro.
* Armor is not available on air units except for the Freeman.
* Heal is not available on infantry units except for the Xipe and Ocelot.
* Block and anti-missile ray are not available on infantry units.
* Credit drain is currently only available on the Gungnir.
* When a unit is freshly deployed, it has a few seconds of immunity from being indirectly affected by enemy abilities such as explosive rounds or the effects of mines. However, this does not hold true if they are the ones who triggered the mine.
* When shields are stacked, the newer shields will have their health added to the health bar for shield health along with the older shields. When the older shields expire, their health is removed from the bar, making it seem as if all shielded units suddenly took damage from an unseen source.

## Bugs

* If an enemy unit avoids getting killed with an otherwise fatal shot, such as blocking it, units may stop attacking and start moving for a split second before realizing and taking a second to readjust and finish off the enemy unit. If other enemy units are in range, they will be targeted instead, leaving the supposedly dead unit alive until the other enemies are killed. The same phenomenon happens when an enemy unit would have been killed by an attack but is suddenly healed and survives the would-be fatal attack.
	+ This can happen multiple times if the attacking units are blinded or by blocking another would-be fatal shot.
	+ This causes units to sometimes start attacking bases despite the fact that there are still units actively the base.
* If the phenomenon that is detailed above happens due to a heal preventing the death, upon death abilities such as death refund may trigger even when the unit does not actually die.
	+ Conversely, a death refund could cause the deployment of a healing unit that saves the unit with death refund.
* The bounty ability does not work properly. In-game descriptions state it is supposed to trigger on kill rather than getting hit. For example, units with an air bounty ability are supposed to have a chance to grant extra deploy credits for killing air units instead of from taking hits from air units.
* The unit type-specific variant of strengthen appears to be not working properly, as it still triggers when an enemy unit of any type is killed.
* If a poisoned unit is killed and has armor active at the time of death, the reduced damage numbers for the poison will continue to appear until the poison wears off.
* The loading screen still has an outdated tip about research enhancing the power of abilities.
* The description for blind revenge and smoke mine on some units state that the affected enemies will be unable to move or shoot, which is incorrect. Blinded units can freely move and shoot, though shots will do no damage since the shots end up missing their target.
* Weaken and strengthen effects can be stacked, though it is stacked additively rather than multiplicatively, which can result in some absurd cases. For example, if a unit with weaken as its major ability and another unit with weaken as its minor ability both happen to weaken the same target, the targeted enemy will do no damage for as long as its suffering from both weaken effects since 70% plus 30% equals a 100% reduction. Currently, the only way to stack strengthen effects is with the Sentinel and its two strengthen abilities.
	+ Even if a double-weakened unit does no damage, armor, block, and anti-missile ray can still be triggered by the harmless attack.
* Final revenge may rarely do more damage than intended to a random enemy unit caught in the blast.
* If a unit has the explosive mine ability and shoots volleys of multiple shots rather than a single shot for its attack, the mine will only deal a certain percentage of one of the shots in the volley. That is, the damage done by the mine is not a certain percentage of the unit's full attack damage, but rather a percentage of only part of the unit's listed attack damage. For example, if a unit has the explosive mine as its minor ability and shoots a volley of 4 shots that total 1,000 damage (250 damage per shot), the mine will only deal 250 damage.
* The description for air deterrence is incorrect in the game, stating that upon killing an enemy air unit, it has a chance to grant the player extra deploy credits. This is the description intended for air bounty rather than deterrence. Air deterrence still functions normally however.
* When upgrading the deploy discount ability in the hangar, the description will erroneously state intensity upgrades as a percentage rather than in seconds.
* The description for shield states that the shield will absorb some amount of damage between 0 and 1. When upgrading the intensity of the shield in the hangar, it will state the number as a percentage without changing the erroneous value (will absorb 0-1% of damage).

## Trivia

* When the game was initially released, unit abilities were upgraded in the research lab using oil and time, rather than using thorium and oil in the hangar.
* Several abilities were extremely bugged when the game first launched. Strengthen, frenzy, and ordinance did not work at all while final revenge and explosive mines only did 1 damage to enemy units.
	+ When strengthen was fixed, frenzy had a bug in which it applied the damage boost effect to the **attacking** unit, not the **attacked** unit. This leads to the amusing scene in which once hit, the unit has a chance to give the enemy a strength boost to assist in its own death.

* If an ability is unit type-specific, the targeted unit type will be included in the ability's icon with the exception of strengthen.
* Unit abilities all had different names in the past depending on whether the ability is minor, normal, or major. For example, the poison ability was called thorium rounds, uranium rounds, and plutonium rounds if it was a minor, normal, or major ability respectively.
	+ If the player taps on a locked ability and attempts to upgrade it, the original names can still be seen in the window that pops up that tells the player that the ability is currently locked.
* Whenever the ricochet ability triggers, the shot will always travel in a straight line to its target no matter what. The most prominent example can be seen on the Apollo, as normal shots arc like other artillery, but shots capable of bouncing lasers toward the target.
* Before event units were added, a few abilities were exclusive to certain units. This includes the ordinance ability for the Chall, ricochet for the Jinn, frenzy for the Wakizashi and Shade, deterrence for the Dirk and Wasp, and bounty for the Arbalest and Polecat.
* The higher the level cap of an ability is, the more details there are on the border surrounding the ability icon.
* During development, many abilities are communicated to the player through words instead of visuals. For example, stunned units display the word stunned above themselves.
* If the player looks closely, a unit triggering blind revenge will also spray out parts that are identical to those ejected when a smoke mine is detonated.