Strategies

This is a list of some basic **strategies** in Starblast.io. There are no perfect strategies or techniques, but learning these basic moves can help you get started. Feel free to add your own to this list!

## General

These strategies are not really specific to any particular mode.

### Upgrading

*See also: Upgrades*
Have a general idea of how you want to upgrade (what upgrades on each ship, and the upgrade path you want to take). You might sometimes need to tweak your upgrade path on-the-fly, but your ship upgrade path can usually be decided early on.

Figure out the best upgrade order for each ship (usually Energy Regen first in team mode, unless you have mining pods and some other stat sucks and this needs higher priority). Sometimes, you just want to powermine (upgrade Energy Regen, or nothing for Tier 1 and 2, and then fill cargo with gems, deposit at base if needed) to the next tier, so don't waste gems on unnecessary upgrades. Upgrading a ship differs from mode to mode. In team mode, an upgrade might be very helpful, but if you use the same upgrade in Invasion, you would fail hard! For example, you would upgrade energy and shield regen first for A-Speedster in Team Mode, whereas in Invasion you would upgrade speed first, so thinking about upgrades is very important. With the U-Sniper, skipping Damage and Agility upgrades lets you move backwards faster with recoil, but then each shot does less damage, and it accelerates slowly. In U-Series and Nautic Series, certain ship stats should not be upgraded (such as Energy for U-Spread/U-Center/U-Octa/Catfish, and Energy/Damage/Bullet Speed for Cuttlefish).

Ship upgrades form a  DAG (directed acyclic graph). Each edge in the ship graph can be assigned a weight representing *how bad the previous ship is to use*, and a shortest path algorithm can generate a  shortest-path tree, which is not necessarily unique. This best-upgrade-tree is the tree of all preferred upgrade paths. As the ship graph is a DAG, there is no need to use  Dijkstra's algorithm to compute it. It can be computed by doing a  topological sort and visiting ships in any topological order (or just visit all of the ships in a tier before visiting ships in the next tier), determining the  shortest distance and predecessor of each visited ship.

Possible best-upgrade-trees are shown below. The edge weights are subjective, and different players might assign different edge weights, resulting in different trees.

Before a game, decide which Tier 6 ship you want, and follow the path to it. Since there are more Tier 6 ships than Tier 7 ships, and Tier 6 is easier to reach, you should choose a Tier 6 ship. The best-upgrade-tree does suggest a preference for a best Tier 6 ship to reach a given Tier 7 ship though. If a leaf node (ship with no children) is Tier 5 or lower, then it means your ship path is not preferred, and you should use a different ship path[In starblast though, there are few or none of those leaf nodes].

#### Vanilla

```
Fly
├── Delta-Fighter
│   │   Pulse-Fighter
│   │   │   Vanguard
│   │   │   └── U-Sniper
│   │   │       └── Advanced-Fighter
│   │   └── Mercury
│   │       └── FuryStar
│   │           └── Scorpion
│   │               └── Odyssey
│   └── Side-Fighter
│       ├── X-Warrior
│       │   └── T-Warrior
│       │       ├── Marauder
│       │       └── Condor
│       │           └── Shadow X-3
│       └── Side-Interceptor
│           ├── Aetos
│           │   └── A-Speedster
│           └── Shadow X-2
└── Trident
   ├── Shadow X-1
   └── Y-Defender
       ├── Pioneer
       │   └── Howler
       │       ├── Rock-Tower
       │       │   └── Bastion
       │       └── Barracuda
       │           └── Aries
       └── Crusader
           └── Bat-Defender
               └── O-Defender

```

In Vanilla, the Shadow X-3 is best for Survival, and the Odyssey is the best ship for Team Mode (see #Vanilla Team Mode Meta).

FuryStar is also a good path to Marauder.

The Crusader mines faster than the Pioneer, but it's slow and poor at combat. Some players prefer it to reach Howler because it mines faster.

The X-Warrior mines faster than the Side-Intercepter, but it's slow and poor at combat. Some players prefer it to reach Aetos because it mines faster.

The Vanguard is underpowered, but that is the price to pay for upgrading to the overpowered U-Sniper that can kill an Odyssey.

#### U-Series

```
U-Sniper MK 2
├── U-Cruiser
│   ├── U-Penta
│   │   └── U-Arsenal
│   │       └── U-Punisher
│   │           └── U-Barricade
│   │               └── U-Wall
│   └── U-Spread
│       ├── U-Center
│       │   ├── U-Octa
│       │   │   ├── U-Monitor
│       │   │   └── U-Perimeter
│       │   │       ├── Heartbreaker
│       │   │       └── U-Fusion
│       │   └── H-Destroyer
│       │       └── U-Bruiser
│       └── U-Interceptor
└── U-Quad
    ├── H-Warrior
    │   └── U-Speeder
    │       └── Trailblazer
    │           └── U-Afterburn
    └── U-Sentry
        └── U-Siege
            ├── U-Demon
            │   └── U-Smasher
            │       └── U-Marksman
            └── U-Pulsar
                ├── Hellfire
                │   └── Shadow X-27
                └── U-10 Thunder

```

Some players prefer U-Sentry (instead of H-Warrior) to U-Speeder because it mines faster and can retreat with recoil, although it doesn't retreat as fast as the H-Warrior. Some players also might prefer U-Interceptor (instead of U-Speeder) to Trailblazer because it's a better attacking ship, but it's trickier to use and doesn't mine as easily.

Trailblazer is also a good path to U-Smasher, as an alternative to going through U-Demon.

U-Monitor is also a good path to U-Wall if you like to go the miner route through U-Octa.

U-Punisher is a trade-off for the OP U-Barricade.

#### Nautic Series

```
Snail
├── Jellyfish
│   ├── Squid
│   │   ├── Cuttlefish
│   │   │   ├── Swordfish
│   │   │   │   └── Narwhal
│   │   │   └── Giant Squid
│   │   │       ├── Orca
│   │   │       │   └── Colossal Squid
│   │   │       └── Octopus
│   │   └── Lionfish
│   │       └── Catfish
│   └── Archerfish
│       ├── Lobster
│       │   └── Dolphin
│       │       └── Beaked Whale
│       │           ├── Fin Whale
│       │           └── Whale Shark
│       └── Scad Fish
│           └── Reef Shark
│               ├── Shark
│               └── Grouper Fish
└── Crab
    ├── Guitarfish
    │   └──  Stingray
    │       └──  Piranha
    │           └── Angler
    └── Turtle
        ├── Flying Fish
        │   └── Sawfish
        │       └── Hammerhead Shark
        └── Starfish
            ├── Leatherback Turtle
            └── Spider Crab
                ├── Manta
                └── Beluga

```

Catfish is also a good path to Beaked Whale.

#### Alien Intrusion

```
TREE TO BE ADDED IN THE FUTURE

```

Hawk > Phoenix is a good path, since they are fast and agile, making it easy to farm yellow saucers without healers. Slow ships have a hard time dodging shots from the yellow saucer, requiring healers to support them, although they have higher firepower.

Photon > Harpy is also good too, trading some stats for more speed.

Cthulhu is an OP ship, but its ship path forces you to go through two rammer ships.

#### Fully Upgrade Ship (not for Tier 1 and Tier 2)

This is a simple strategy, recommended for beginners. (And can all around be helpful) Whenever the upgrades are unlocked, upgrade all of your available stats. This way your ship will have the most minimal weakness in terms of its stats. One thing you have to keep in mind when using this strategy is that it will take longer to upgrade your ship since you upgrade your stats first. Of course, you can skip some upgrades like the Speed and Agility stats if you have the skill to outpace other players. If you are feeling uncertain, just upgrade your stats, and you have nothing to worry about. (Except for other enemies that are teaming with other ships) Unless you have the skill, you should probably use this strategy until you get better, then you can make your own favorite strategy!

Do not waste time maxing Tier 1 and Tier 2 ships. Just skip to Tier 3 before maxing ships. The optimal number of times to upgrade energy regen for Tier 2 varies (twice for Delta-Fighter, once for Trident), but most people don't bother and just don't upgrade anything for Tier 2.

In U-Series, mining is faster than in vanilla, so you should generally max your Tier 3+ ships.

In Alien Intrusion, conflict between teams or surprise attacks from aliens are quite often, so you should max your tier 3+ ships as well.

#### Power Mining

Upgrade Energy Regen, and upgrade Damage if needed to empty energy capacity. Then upgrade to the next tier. In some mods, different attributes shouldn't be upgraded. For example, for Cuttlefish and U-Spread, don't upgrade Energy Regen.

Other: It is also a wise idea to upgrade energy capacity if you upgrade damage, allowing you to fire more shots before running out of energy. This is also needed with most of the pulse ships.

##### Mining Ships

When you start out in a server (preferably a game where there are no tier 5+ ships), go defender path (far right path). Mine to the next tier while barely upgrading to make mining a bit faster (energy regen, shield regen, and possibly ship speed since the ships on this path are quite slow). Do this till you get to O-Defender where you should max it and then mine to Aries, which is the best mining ship. As Aries, you can't enter the station, so give gems to your teammates, but not too much, since you need a gem pool for protection. This is referred to as power mining which is also considered as a noob tactic.

In team mode, this is a great strategy (even if considered a noob tactic) You can upgrade your station far faster than other teams (obviously buy mining pods)
Once you reach O-Defender, go on the attack! First max out upgrades. You will have enough creds to buy lots of pods and secondary weapons. If you have 2000 or more credits, buy torpedos, and destroy or damage an enemy base! If you plan to fight a lot, I recommend defense pods as well as attack pods. Enemies will have to get though your 550 shields, and 13 shields/sec regen plus the pods to even disable you! This is quite similar to the "Barracuda and healer" strategy.

In Vanilla, the mining ships are on the right (Barracuda, O-Defender, Howler, Crusader). In U-Series and Nautic Series, they are on the left (U-Center, U-Octa, U-Perimeter, Cuttlefish, Narwhal, Giant Squid, although Starfish is good for mining too). In Alien Intrusion, use farming ships(speedsters or tanks + healers) and attack pods.

### Cheating Death

A good strategy for tier six ships is to fill up your gems but not go to tier seven. This might be risky when your station is under attack, as it requires a fully filled Level 4 station to upgrade to tier seven. So ensure that the enemies are nowhere close to breaching the gem storage, Find a group of enemies and attack them. (Note that the Marauder is a good ship for this as it can annihilate lower tier ships in one go when fully upgraded.) When the enemies are about to kill you, select a tier seven ship to upgrade too and destroy them. (Not tested yet, but it works in theory.)

### Fight/Frag

This strategy is one that will do one thing only, get you to the top of the leaderboard in no time at all. This is done well by seven ships: the Side-Interceptor, Side-Fighter, Pulse-Fighter, Pioneer, Advanced-Fighter, Howler, and Barracuda (note: Y-Defender can be used but requires more skill, same for FuryStar and Delta-Fighter). The amount of damage these ships can pump out quickly makes them ideal for taking out ships. They are a range of high and low tiers, which means that you may not only be a higher tier to frag others. Some players have easily gotten over 50 frags using this strategy. (Note: Don't abuse this strategy, it can make the game unenjoyable. Also, to counter this, get a heavy hitter like the U-Sniper, Advanced-Fighter, and Scorpion. (for smaller ships ideally of lower tier like 3 and 4) Try to hit them as these ships have low mass. As soon the get hit and start to spin, hit them while they are spinning and they will die.) vice versa for the ships of higher tier 5 and 6.

### Shadow Torpedo

Another strategy, if you don't feel like teaming up, is to utilize the Shadow X-1, the ship with the highest top speed in the game. Get a maxed out Shadow X-1 and mine peacefully during the game (if any other ships try to kill you, you will easily outpace most of them).

Save up gems until you can buy a torpedo, and perhaps some missiles for survival mode. When you and ideally one other ship are the only ones left, (they will almost always have a much stronger ship than you), simply fire everything at them and win the game.

Try to avoid them as long as possible at the end of the game in the gravity fields (running between the fields when they've overlapped most of the map is a good strategy, then if the stronger ship follows you in, they will be unable to move sideways to dodge the torpedo).

Watch out for the Shadow X-2, it has a slower top speed but faster acceleration and is a threat. Also if you are left with a very large high-level ship, they will often take a lot of damage from slamming into asteroids when the gravity fields are at maximum saturation, so wait a while before firing the torpedo.

* This is not effective because of an arming delay on the torpedoes, the same for mines.
* The strategy is still viable, but try and inhibit their movement with some mines randomly place in the center to stop their mobility (note: may be seen as a douche move)
* This strategy works pretty well in team mode, but players can dodge the torpedoes and missiles. Missiles are harder to dodge as they home in on targets.
* you can use shadow x-1 against a group of pulse ships, slow ships and teamers becaues you can easily outmaneuver them and slow them (in upgrading). I see this is very good to make your enemy (in team mode) to not mine peacefully and give more time to your allies to mine and level up (upgrade the shadow x-1 to max speed and agility) well actually this is not included in the shadow torp strat
* shadow x-2 is a bit better at this strategy since it can store 2 extra secondaries (total 5) and it still is the second-fastest in the game. The only way you will mess up is if somebody is using the same strategy but is using an x-1, or somebody is really good at using the fly. With the the shadow x-1, a shield pod would be helpful in case if you run into a ton of ships.

### RCS Dodge

This strategy can be very useful if you are being attacked by someone using RCS on you. When the player shoots at you, turn to the left or right as quickly as possible, avoiding their shots. Shoot at your enemy afterward. If they come back, repeat the process. Eventually, you can kill your enemy or succeed in boring them out of attacking altogether, which is awesome!

Two variants of this strategy are RCS strafing and squidding.

With strafing, you disable RCS and fly circles around your opponent. While an experienced player can easily counter this strategy, by flying an erratic pattern, you can disorient and destroy your enemy. I have done this on an Advanced Fighter using a Shadow X-2. This strategy requires a ship with a good balance of speed and firepower however, making the A-Speedster (Vanilla), the Photon (Alien Intrusion), or the Piraña (Nautic), ideal. I have taken out many players and even boss aliens solo using strafing. Be careful, however, as a ship with high fire rate and damage can counter strafing. The benefit of RCS strafing compared to normal strafing is that you are harder to track and to hit. And it's fun to shred an entire team to bits. However, it requires skill.

With squidding, you disable RCS and use your shots to propel you backwards. This has the added advantage of throwing a lot of bullets at your pursuers. The ideal ship has high damage and recoil, and good energy regeneration. Most heavy hitters are perfect for squidding. However, doing this in an asteroid field will most likely result in death.

### Group Base Nuking (Torpedo)

This requires you to have a decent teammate and a good mining ship. Then, ask him to fill his inventory with torpedoes. Then, target a station module to drain gems of the leading/second leading team. Example with cuttlefish:

It needs at least another teammate to nuke the station module, and then you have a better chance of nuking the station. If you have more decent teammates, nuke the depot (s) for fun. If you actually get rid of both depots, your team almost always wins the game. Without depots, the other team will be alive, but will not be able to access high-tiers. Usually, after your team gets full of secondaries and upgraded, you will be able to easily annihilate your opponents. In some rare cases (such as having a team of pros as your enemy), this will cause the enemy to attack your base aggressively, making you lose.

### Trap Maneuver

This strategy is highly effective against someone chasing you if done properly. You can use this in Survival Mode (if you have friends) or Team Mode. So, when someone chases you, run away. Then, have your friends come from all sides of the attacker. At this point, commence attacking the threat. When they are surrounded, they will easily be killed. This strategy requires good coordination with your team members, or it will fail, i.e., they get away or get killed along with your team. This is hard to do in survival mode because of bouncing lasers.

Anonymous I find that you don't necessarily need much coordination, because half the time your team is just going to shoot at anything they see so if your target is gullible enough to follow you then this will work very well.

(and it's pretty funny watching some gullible barracuda get wrecked by tier 3 ships:D)

### Quick Gem Farming (No Intentional Player Killing)

If you want to upgrade your ship very quickly to keep pace with a highly efficient team, try the following methods:

#### Alien Farming

Farm the aliens in the map. They spawn in large quantities, so make sure your ship has enough health. Good alien farming ships have a typical HP above 200. However, do be careful of your health. Aliens have considerable damage. -(fixed minor spelling mistakes here, you're welcome)

#### Alien Employment (**VERY RISKY**)

Employ aliens to mine for you! First, pay a visit to the aliens, and make one follow you to an asteroid. Then, go behind the asteroid, and it will shoot you like an idiot. Then, make it farm the asteroid for you. When it breaks, kill the alien and get both the gems from the alien and the asteroid.

#### Player Ramming

If you see a person with considerable HP sitting there AFK, and in an asteroid field, go to it, and ram it into an asteroid. After a few times, you can both "accidentally" kill the player and get the asteroids. Also considered as cannibalism if you do it to a teammate, or generally a douche tactic.

### Barracuda Destruction Method

If there is a Barracuda hot on your trail, this strategy is very helpful. First, max an A-Speedster or Marauder, since they are the 2 fastest T6 ships. (Condor works just fine as well, it's just a bit slower than the A-Speedster or Marauder.) Then, buy a couple of torpedoes (missiles will also do fine but you will have to buy more). When the barracuda is right behind you, turn off RCS, turn around, and fire a torpedo, or just all of them. The Barracuda will be instantly be annihilated, and you will get extra points and cargo. Not effective because of arming delay on the torpedoes and global cool down. But one can kill a barracuda easily with RCS off and drifting away from the ship. (just don't get in front of an asteroid or you're dead.)

### Barracuda vs Barracuda

How To Use Barracuda To Kill a Barracuda

Do you ever find it hard to kill a Barracuda in a Barracuda? Then "revenge ram" them.

The strategy is aim for them and wait, if they ram you, then after about 0.5 second (you have to be good at timing), you ram them back and the funny thing is they will fly faster then a fly and can catch up to a Shadow X-1 while you aren't getting harmed, and it is a useful and funny strategy in pro deathmatch.

### The Ultimate Domination Strategy

All you need here is a maxed-out Side-Fighter or Pulse-Fighter, 3 packs of missiles, and you are set. Be prepared to watch your score gradually increase. People especially hate this (take this from one of the victims of this) along with secondary spam being impossible outside of battle royale. But as long as you didn't get deleted by missiles they are generally ended quickly by a player with a good aim in a heavy hitter due to both ships having low mass.

Missiles, while being agile and fast, can be outflown. The real advantage of this strategy is the element of surprise. If you can land the first volley, you will have gained the upper hand.

### Spying

If your statistics on another team’s base is not enough, or you cannot gather enough intelligence from your radar map, or you simply want to play a prank on the other team, you can technically spy on the other team. Just get a fast fighter, such as a fly or a Speester (or just any speedy fighter), max out its upgrades, speed and agility especially, and pay a quick visit to spy on the other team. When you see the base come near the second (or first, depending on the map size) curved line on the rader map, turn off RCS to get some pretty good shots (both pictures and actual hits) at the station and the team. Then, run away as fast as you can (in case someone is after you) while shooting at whoever is behind you. Or instead, use the recoil of some ships to push past the terminal velocity for a brief momment, which accelerates your escape while damadging opponents. **NOTE THAT THE Heartbreaker SHOULD NOT BE USED FOR SUCH RANDOM OPERATIONS, AS THE HIGH RECOIL LASERS WILL FIRE RANDOMLY, OBLITERATING YOUR CHANCE OF SURVIVAL!**

Although the possibility of using slow and weak ships (the Vanguard) or powerful but slow ships (the Odyssey) had been explored and had been succsessful most of the time, it is **STRICTLY LIMITED TO EXPERIENCED PLAYERS ONLY**~~, and new players are not supposed to gather intelligence anyways.~~

Recommended ships: Fly, Shadow X-1, Shadow X-2, A-Speedster, and U-Sniper (if flown by a very experienced commander who knows the game well.)

### No Escape

This strategy involves having one very powerful ship, such as an O-Defender or Advanced Fighter, and one Shadow X-1 (or Fly) (A-speedster can work well because it can survive longer than the fly and X1), which means that when the large ship attacks someone, the smaller, faster ship can follow and shoot them until they are destroyed. If the target attempts to slow down and kill the weaker ship, the powerful ship will catch up and destroy them. There is almost no escape for this tactic other than being in a team.

If this tactic is used against you and are alone, your only chance will be to disable RCS to drift away at maximum speed while turning around and shooting the faster ship, however, this may be difficult as you will likely have been weakened by the stronger ship.

### RCS Escape

If you see a group/one stronger enemy than you, turn off RCS right away and go in the opposite direction. Then turn around and keep on shooting the enemy (or where you expect them to be on the radar screen). This is preferably done by the U-Sniper, which has a high recoil and shooting range. The recoil will accelerate you (for a split second) above your terminal velocity and escape much quicker while shooting at your enemies.

This is **VERY** risky when in an asteroid field, but however, experienced players can find a path within **some** asteroid fields. This is **HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENED** near enemy bases, as you will get killed or hit someone behind you easily, and die.

### Intimidation Tactics

This concept is fairly simple, but can be cataclysmically devastating to groups of enemies when done correctly. To do this maneuver, you are recommended to use a fast ship that can deal punishing amounts of damage (for example; A Pulse-Fighter, an A-Speedster/Condor, or Howler). Find a group of enemies that are clustered together in a group, preferably around 4-5 (may vary depending on your skill level), and charge them. The key to this strategy is to exude the confidence of a player that will *not* go down easily, and the intimidation alone can be enough to spook them into scattering.

Terminate them at your leisure. This strategy is ***VERY*** risky and should only be used by good players. It is important to strike without hesitation or mercy, and when done correctly, can demoralize the entire enemy team.

### Faking a Retreat

This strategy works well when paired with the previous strategy *Intimidation Tactics*. If you're ever in the situation where you've bit off more than you can chew and you're being pursued by a large force, keep this tactic in mind. Fly in the direction towards your nearest group of allies and hit the RCS, swinging your nose around towards your pursuers and firing back to keep their attention.

Once they begin pulling off and making a retreat of your own, flip the tables. Rush them down, firing at them to continue keeping their attention. Lure a small number (usually around 2-3) away from the main group and surgically eliminate them. Rinse and repeat.

### Multi-Laser

All you need is a ship with a high rate of fire, such as the Marauder, Side-Interceptor, FuryStar or Aetos, and load your secondaries slot with attack pods. Then max out your ship. When you attack, your enemies will be overwhelmed by your lasers and will almost instantly be killed. Note the H-mercury was replaced but the strategy still holds true.

If you want to use a Marauder, upgrade your energy capacity, or else your bursts will be short and ineffective.

If you are fast enough you can wait for your burst lasers to charge and then fire.

### Fly Frag (only for experienced players)

Get a maxed Fly and frag other players. With their gems, save to get rockets or missiles. As no one expects a Fly to have missiles, you have the element of surprise.

This is easy to counter, as even a maxed fly isn't very powerful. A ship with powerful pulses (U-Sniper, Advanced-Fighter, Scorpion, etc.) can kill the fly in 1-2 hits, and even if a direct hit doesn't kill the offending Fly immediately, it will knock it into a spin that is hard to recover from, and likely launch it at high velocity into an asteroid. Ships with high burst damage (Side-fighter, X-Warrior, Shadow X-2, etc.) can also easily defeat the Fly, as they can wear down its shields very fast. Fast, maneuverable ships (A-Speedster, Shadow X-2, etc.) can cause the Fly to waste its missiles by leading them so that asteroids are hit instead. Finally, ships with very high shield capacity, such as the Rock-Tower and O-Defender, can soak up the missiles and shouldn't have any problems unless the Fly is with a team.

* Good luck fragging anyone with a fly :P
* The Electric Boogaloo: only attempt this if you're comparable in skill to nordic commander because otherwise why even bother
* WASD: The Fly as well as the X-1 are hard to catch, but if you use a tank ship like the Y defender, you can smash them into a rock and easily kill them.

### Gem Transfer

Gem Transfer is a new mechanic added in a recent update! In this update, if you hold "V" you will drop gems from your cargo onto the floor and gem transfer varies by tier. For example a t3 is only allowed to drop 15 gems at a time while a t6 can drop 30 gems at a time. This is a very nice update to team mode as this allows players to join teams late but still get up to speed quickly by their teammates dropping gems for them. This is also a very good strategy when you have a fast miner! You can heal the miner so it can mine quickly and then the miner returns you the favor and gives you gems so you are maxed out then both you and the fast miner can attack together and dominate the teams easily. This strategy allows you to be always ahead of the other teams in quality as you would have many more upgraded ships wait for them to strike. Your only problem is if your team mate is on a mobile and it becomes a one way thing. To stop this you can mine asteroids for them and tell them they can have the gems.

An example of gem transfer: https://tenor.com/view/starblast-io-give-gems-update-gif-14426769

### Using Secondaries

Secondaries are very useful in Starblast. However, use them wisely, or you will be wasting hundreds of credits (gems). For example, a poorly aimed torpedo will make you lose 500 credits, which (depending on your ship) takes *seemingly forever* to mine.

#### Propelled Weapons

##### Rockets

Rockets are fast, agile, home in on targets, and have no arming delay. It is not recommended to use rockets in late game combat due to their tiny damage(50) and splash radius. However, in early game they can be useful(e.g. raiding enemies with a Shadow X-1) because they are extremely cheap. You buy four of those for 100 credits.

##### Missiles

Missiles are slightly more bulky than rockets. They have a one second arming delay. Personally I think this is the most useful projectile in combat because they deal as much damage as the main pulse of an Aries or an maxed Advanced-Fighter (which is 150) and home in on targets. Aim well when you launch those, because they have an arming delay and are not so agile. A nearly fool-proof way of hitting enemy ships with these is to wait for the to get close, and then fire at your target. since the distance is short, this will most likely hit your target, if not killing them the second you fire it. You can buy two of those for 250 credits.

##### Torpedoes

Torpedoes are the only ballistic secondary in the game, (they can miss the target if shot too close). They are extremely slow and do NOT home in on targets. They do massive(500) damage and have a large splash radius. Never use them for solo combat for obvious reasons, unless your enemy is an Odyssey or an Aries (a space-faring trash can, according to X-27). Instead, it is meant to be used for base destroying, as they deal twice as much damage to space stations. A few well-aimed torpedoes are all that are needed to drain all the gems from a level 4 base. You can also use torpedoes when you run into a ton of ships. When you launch a torpedo in a ton of ships you will almost certainly hit one of the ships and weaken the entire group of ships due to the large splash radius. (I find this very useful when dealing with swarms of A-Speedster/Howler/Marauder raiders) You buy one for 500 credits.

#### Mines

Both mines have the same damage per credit (4 damage/credit).

##### Space Mines

Space mines are more useful in combat, because they have less arming delay. You don't really need a large splash radius in ship-to-ship combat, because you mainly blow up the mines by making the enemy make contact with it, meaning the enemy will be at the center at the explosion. Stacking mines will make it very lethal.

##### Heavy Mines

Heavy mines are more useful for base nuking (douche tactic) and base defending, because they have a larger splash radius, which means you can drain more gems/hit more attackers. It also known that entire teams get into discord voice calls to stack heavy mines around their station, so when they are busy attacking other bases, the mines ward off the attackers' attackers.

#### Pods

Pods vary greatly in type and usages. It depends on which type of ship you are to purchase which type of pod. All three types cost 120 credits

##### Mining Pods

These pods help mine out asteroids the user is mining. They fire at a slow rate and is typically proactive in hitting whatever asteroid its host is firing at.

##### Attack Pods

These pods attack the nearest enemy. They fire at a similar rate than a mining pod and is helpful in ship-to-ship combat. The pods deal damage, even if their owner is a healer.

##### Defense Pods

These pods protect you from damage. Whenever an enemy approaches, the defense pods cram together in the direction of the enemy. It is best fit for those ships whose mass is too large to purchase any secondaries after upgrading, or are too slow to use the hit and run technique.

### Shadow X-1/X-2 rammer

You can either use the Shadow X-1 or use the Shadow X-2. you upgrade your X-1/X-2 to max shield regeneration, max shield cap, max speed, and max agility. you then should save for either a pack of missiles or save for a pack of rockets. to do this strategy, fly into your foe and spin them out, then launch rockets or missiles (whatever you chose) while the ship is spinning. the strategy can be countered by a ship with high shield cap, or a fast shield regen rate. Not super effective due to the cooldown on the missiles.

### Pillboxing

This is a strategy derived from a similar space combat game known as Star Control II. In the game's fandom, it's often regarded as a cheap, but semi-effective tactic. It follows the idea of "If you move, you can collide with the planet." While the planets are mere background features in the game (nor are there any gravity wells that pull you to your doom), there's still asteroids and mines to worry about, as both can do substantial damage to your ship if you aren't prepared. The translated strat is stay in one spot and if an enemy comes nearby, you blast them back to their base. Pillboxing with an unupgraded/or not sufficiently upgraded ship is pretty much suicide, and some ships are better than others. Ships with a huge amount of knockback (Advanced Fighter and Scorpion in Vanilla, Beluga in Nautic) are usually the best to go with, along with ships with high shields (O-Defender). Another thing to consider, for both pillboxing and countering pillboxing, is secondaries. Running a ship with full defense pods or attack pods almost triples your chance of coming out on top, if you're the one who is pillboxing. Mines will also help to set up walls between asteroids, usually deterring off opponents who decide to come near your death trap.

(if you do decide to pillbox with a mine-wall strategy, use a fast ship like the Condor or A-speedster and equip pods)

The best ways to counter pillboxers is to use rockets and missiles, as they will be forced to start moving because you caught them off guard. Then you start chasing them down as their fearful retreat gave you the upper hand.

### Marauder Swarm

As the name says, you swarm your enemy with a group of marauders (3 or more to be most effective). When they all attack at the same time most ships will get stunned from the shear amount of incoming damage. It was first seen in an AOW in Asia in 2020 when NukePhysics organized a few people in the STACK clan (which he is the leader and creator of) to attack with Marauders and it was quite effective at attacking the enemy teams and only was stopped by a large grouping of heavy hitters like scorpions and advanced fighters and torpedo rains. It's seen rarely in team mode and mostly just with 2 people working together. The swarm becomes even deadlier when the marauders are also loaded up with attack pods and/or missiles.

## Team Mode

### Vanilla Team Mode Meta

In #Vanilla, the Odyssey is the best ship for Team Mode, as it requires little to no skill to use in groups and it can upgrade from the best Tier 6 ship. The best strategy (informally called "meta comp") is to have two Odyssey healers with many Odyssey attackers. For this purpose, the best Tier 6 ship to use is the Scorpion. With a group of players, join the same team and take the Scorpion to Odyssey path listed above. The Pulse-Fighter is the best Tier 3 ship for combat, which can be used to sabotage the mining speed of other teams. This applies to the Mercury, FuryStar and heavily applies Scorpion. All ships on the Scorpion path rank 2nd or 3rd in mining speed within their ship tier. The Odyssey is currently the Tier 7 with the most energy regeneration while also having 700 mass and 750 shield, almost as much as the Aries. It has a 250 damage pulse that fires every 1.66 seconds. Each attacking Odyssey in the group can simply shoot in a general direction where the enemies are, creating an impassable wall of huge lasers. A group of Odysseys can use healing to negate damage from the opposing team. Just one healing Odyssey will negate the damage of any ship except for an Odyssey, Bastion, or Aries, but you do not need to be concerned about the Bastions or Aries, because both of those ships lack in DPS to kill the Odyssey and they lose against the Odyssey in a 1v1. When using this low-skill strategy, the only way for other teams to win against your team is for them to use the same strategy themselves.

If more healers are needed, the additional healers can also choose to go from Howler through Barracuda and become Aries healers. Note that the Barracuda cannot heal.

### Fast Game

Get 30 players in a voice chat, join the same team, upgrade everyone to Side-Fighter with max Energy Regen, for a total of 1050 DPS, and then go to kill the lvl 1 bases. It takes less than 4 seconds to kill a spawn module and 5 seconds to kill a depot module, so it takes only 36 seconds to kill the bases (plus some extra time to kill defenders). Make sure as many people as possible focus on one target (enemy or module).

### Weak Ships

Ship upgrades are very steep and are even more steep at higher levels. Therefore upgrading your base before enemies provides huge advantage, but you must be careful when upgrading ships. Maxed level 3 ships can win against unupgraded level 6 ships.

If the entire enemy team upgrades to level 6, you can simply attack them with maxed level 3-5 ships, or if you got to maxed level 6 ships first, attack their unupgraded level 6 ships (which are basically as weak as maxed level 2 ships) with maxed level 6 ships. If you attack their base as well, you can quickly kill ships that spawn (they have no gems and are outnumbered), winning the game. Enemies who powermined cannot downgrade to a maxed ship, so they will leave at that time because it is the correct action, as their loss is impending. If your ship level is one lower than theirs, you can still spawnkill them because they have no gems. However, if your ship is two or more levels lower, be careful if they downgrade to a maxed ship that's more powerful than yours.

Having gems provides a huge advantage, which helps to spawnkill ships that don't have gems. This is also called "base camping", but if your objective is to downgrade enemies, be careful not to attack the station, which will cause enemies to defend and force you to leave.

### Cloaked Torpedo

Launch up to 6 torpedoes at a base, but stay on top of it/them. If someone decides to kill you, even if you die, the torpedo is still there to wreak havoc on their base, unless they choose to sacrifice their ship to save their station. If you don’t get killed, start shooting their station or flee.

However, torpedoes are rarely useful in fights. Most ships will simply dodge, wasting 500 credits. But some ships have poor agility (an Aries, Odyssey, or possibly O-Defender), so you have a good chance of landing a hit with the torpedo and stunning them. However, there is a arming delay of 2 seconds, so fire from enough distance.

### Attacking Base

Obviously, get teammates to help attack the enemy base. Follow these steps:

1. Focus on one structure module to drain gems quickly, so if the attack fails, you do the maximum damage possible.
	* The only exception is if you are in a significant lead (such as Tier 7 ships vs Level 3 base, or Tier 7 ships vs unupgraded Tier 6 ships) and can *guarantee* killing the base, which allows you to skip this step. Do not skip this step if you are only *very likely* to kill the base.
	* In some cases, it makes sense to destroy a few more structure modules to set back the enemy enough for you to attack another enemy's base.
	* Sometimes, the enemy is strong enough to defend spawn/depot modules but not structure modules. In this case, destroy as many as possible until their defences weaken enough to go to the next step.
	* If other structure modules are weakened by torpedoes, optionally finish them off.
	* Otherwise, there is no reason to destroy more structure modules, and you should go to the next step.
2. Focus on one spawn or depot module at a time. This way, you lose less time to module shield regen.
	* Depending on the situation, it might make sense to destroy both depot modules of a lower level base, so you can let the enemy rage-quit while you attack another enemy and later come back to finish off the spawn modules if they didn't all quit.
	* In other cases, it makes sense to kill the spawn modules first so that fewer enemies bother you while you finish off the depots because they will spawn on random coordinates on the map.
3. Repeat Step 2 until the base is destroyed.

Also, there are Secondaries that can help with the attack.

#### Mine Fortress

Mines can play a significant role in team mode! To maximize the potential of mines, you should use them while attacking an enemy base. In most cases when people attack enemy bases, they are easily repelled due to the overwhelming power of the other team, but with this strat, the enemy can't do much. This strategy requires you to get mines, preferably heavies, and surround them around the area where you would be attacking, this strat completely walls you against Barracuda attacks and other ships that try to kill t7s and other ships by ramming them against bases. This also acts as a shield from normal attacks and counterattacks. In addition to being a great wall, it can also be a good place for a Barracuda to ram opponents into so they die. (not to be confused with base nuking)

#### Base Nuking

##### Mines

Go to the center base module (take care not to hit the base) and start spamming alt to place your mines, once you place at least 2 stacks, you can start firing at the base to get their attention (while spamming alt still). When they try to attack with lasers, they will hit the mines and cause them to explode, damaging themselves and the station.

If your ship does not have lasers, ram enemy ships into the pile of mines, dealing heavy damage to their station.

* for best results, Use faster ships like a Side-Fighter, A-Speedster
* Do not abuse this strategy, as the enemy might get angry and decide to get revenge

This strategy can be countered in two parts: while and after they plant. While they plant, missile the attacker, or with a heavy enough ship (like Cuttlefish), slam into the attacker while being invincible from the depot or respawning, just note this is very risky: after the invincibility runs out, you will blow up a large amount of mines causing a very large amount of damage to the base and your ship. After they plant, remove the mines *slowly*. Mines move with the station, so when the mines eventually explode, they will damage the station. The team should carefully shoot mines (the station should not leak gems; if it does, slow down) while healers heal the base, or they can also use station regen to heal. If everyone on your team is Tier 7 and will soon win, it is possible to ignore the mines.

##### Torpedoes

Approach the station and spam 6 torpedoes. Target the center of the base (most dense area of the base), where the splash damage will hit many structure modules and drain more gems than if they hit the outside of the base.

The only exception is if your team is about to win, they are killing the base, and you want to help kill it faster. In this case, aim for the spawn and depot modules, and ignore the structure modules.

There is not much of a counter other than attacking the player as soon as you see their color indicator on the map and hope for the best.

If you have several coordinated players you can kill the depots given you collectively have enough torpedoes.

### Torpedo to kill Slow Tier-7s

If an opposing team has T7 ships, buy 3-4 torpedoes. If you can, recruit your teammates to do the same. 3 torpedoes can kill a Bastion or a Shadow X-3 with a full cargo, and 4 torpedoes are needed to kill an Odyssey or an Aries with a full cargo. Anyways, when you have found your T7 target, press shift-alt repeatedly in their direction, then get out of their way. The torpedoes will blow them apart, and you can salvage their gems to upgrade your station. You just have to be careful or you wasted 2000 gems because there is an arming delay on the torpedoes. This is extremely common in the ACW events in a slightly different form, torpedo rain(s).

Note: this strategy is less viable due to arming delay and global cooldown.

### Healers

Healers lack the ability to damage oppenents, so it's important to choose the right ships for healing.

#### Speedsters

Ships such as the A-Speedster, Shadow X-1, Shadow X-2, and Howler make excellent healers because they are hard to hit so they can easily survive battles. It is recommended to heal-and-run.

#### Tanky Ships

Ships such as the Rock-Tower, Aries, Odyssey, and O-Defender also work well because they have brilliant shield cap and regeneration, so they can soak up large amounts of damage and won't have any problem. When playing those ships it is recommended to use asteroids for cover.

### Attacker and Healer

As an attacker and a healer duo, just go around killing everyone so that your team will win.

### Miner and Healer

Team Mode is designed to encourage teamwork, so one player healing another player ramming asteroids results in faster mining than two players mining individually. This means that if a team is entirely miner/healer pairs (about half of its members are healers), it will outpace teams with few healers.

A healer/attacker duo working together mines faster than two attackers working individually, as a reward for using teamwork and having the healer be more vulnerable. A healer/Barracuda duo mines faster than any other healer/miner duo, in exchange for not being able to shoot lasers as a Barracuda. In general, the heavier ship should ram, while the lighter ship should heal, unless the heavy ship is very slow. For example, a Scorpion should heal an O-Defender, while an Aries should heal an Odyssey despite being heavier, because the Odyssey is faster and better at attacking.

#### Barracuda is healer?

"Avoid the healer Barracuda" The Barracuda can’t the heal the gamers, fun strategy, Yes? Just kill the players, and evolve the Aries or Bastion. [although Colossal Squid Best than Barracuda, big pulses heal the gamers and RAM THE ENEMIES AND ALLIES!!!!!] FUN and PERFECT

#### Scorpion Duo

The Scorpion is very overpowered in Team Mode. A Scorpion healing a Scorpion miner is faster than a Rock-Tower healing a Rock-Tower, assuming the healers use lasers only and do not ram, while the miner rams hard enough to use all of the healer's energy on healing. A Rock-Tower duo is only slightly faster, and that requires the healers to also ram asteroids a little bit while still spending all energy to heal.

After the base is full, they can become two powerful Odysseys. They can even stay as a healer/attacker duo, but if the entire team is doing this, some healers should switch to attacker before upgrading to Odyssey.

#### Barracuda and Healer

Barracuda is a very amazing miner but the shield regen slows it down from reaching max potential, since time is spent picking up gems when shield is depleted. But with the addition of healing, everything is changed!

Healing turns a duo into an absolute mining machine! For this strategy, you need a healer to follow the barracuda and shoot at it while it rams all the asteroids. This is an excellent strategy to max the base and to max teammates!

This strategy does phenomenal in team mode! PearEatingBear and Backfyred tested this and proved that it is amazing in a competitive setting.

## Survival Mode

### Teaming

Teaming is an incredibly risky business. Teams are often known to turn on one another, for crystals, points, or other teammates. You must be careful when teaming with people unknown to be trustworthy or not because sometimes they might not be teaming with you, even if you think so. If your teammate just follows you, no matter what you do, be especially wary and or chase them away, because they might be waiting for you to ram a couple Asteroids or otherwise get your shield depleted, before attacking and killing you for your Gems. Watch your map and be especially wary of groups of ships. Sometimes, it is far better to play solo than with a team.

If you mean to team for security, or just be a trustworthy ally, shoot asteroids others are attempting to mine, this will show you are serious about teaming, and not killing them. It is not recommended to fly around the map as a team, killing everyone and dominating, as this is seen as jerk-like behavior and you may regret this later when a large team attacks your team, or you are targeted for being jerks.

Note from another person: I cannot confirm if this remains viable, but it was at some point it was common to have large groups of Y-Defenders swarming in groups and killing everything, regardless of rank. This included Flies. Please don't do this, unless you are desperate to get a large score. (and even then it will only give a very tiny amount of points if any) Killing flies are useless, and the most gems you get would be 20, so there is no point.

Note from a 3rd person: In regard to the above Y-Defender strategy, never do that. Ever. It is mean. Also, people may say "team" just to get you to drop your guard. I once had a team of Y-defenders attack me. However, that was a long time ago. I was trying to get the A-speedster, but I was never able to max it out.

Note from the administrator of this wiki: Teaming in Survival Mode is generally regarded as a noob tactic since you just gained another "unit" that protects you. If you team to mine or to kill someone (while outnumbering them/their team), many regard that as bad sportsmanship.

BE ALERT: sometimes you will get a person who wants to team with you, but sometimes those people who want to "team" with you can be sketchy, so if you feel unsafe then watch their behavior, a few sketchy things a "partner" could do are following you but not mining I find that very sketchy, especially if they are right on your tail, if they get right up on you move away because they might start shooting you and in since they are that close to you, you are vulnerable. so BE AWARE OF YOUR "TEAMMATES". Also, beware of groups on the radar flying towards you. They can kill you.

A good team suggested is a Howler, U-sniper, T-warrior and Furystar.

### Get Tier 7 fast

Getting to tier 7 quickly makes it pretty easy to win. You can easily win the match in different ways, but this strategy is the most accurate, fastest and most guaranteed way to win. For this, you should choose a good ship path. My favorite route: (Fly > Trident > Y-Defender > Crusader > Bat-Defender > Barracuda). Gather crystals faster by damaging the asteroids with both your ship and your lasers. By doing this, your score will increase and you can even become the leader; however, being a leader will make your opponents target you. This situation can be very dangerous so upgrade to the next tier as soon as possible and protect yourself. When you use Barracuda, you should never attack and constantly be on the move. You can also get tier 7 after collecting enough crystals.

Another thing you need to pay attention to when applying this strategy is to choose the right teammates and not upgrade. Don't get into long chases and stay away from your opponents as this can slow you down. Therefore, you should always keep your eye on the map and be ready to attack or flee at any moment. Your job will be much easier after you become Tier 7. Relax and hunt down your opponents one by one and victory is yours.

**This strategy no longer works due to the summer 2022 Survival mode update.**

### Annoying Flies

If flies keep on running away in Survival mode, try acting AFK. If you are lucky enough for the flies or faster ships to come near you, you can shoot them as an element of surprise and kill them. This strategy mostly works on noobs.

### Death Spin

This is a strategy used in combat. You have to have a maxed-out Pulse Fighter. Once you encounter a higher tier enemy, you ram into them. after you get knocked back you spin behind them, dodging the large bullets and allowing you to hit them. You do this multiple times until the enemy is dead. This is also frowned upon because people hate the rampaging pulse fighter. Still possible with RCS being added in but very hard, you will be better off not using RCS.

Note: This strategy may no longer be effective because of RCS.

### Strafe

Strafe is a game mechanic added in a update during April 2019. To strafe, press key A to strafe left, and D to strafe right. (reversed when facing down) This way, you can circle around a ship and attack them easily while they have to turn in circles to try to hit you. Strafe is an amazing addition to the dueling aspect of the game! Strafing causes much more skill worthy battles against opponents. Strafe is a way you can dodge enemy fires while freely attacking. Strafe has added more strategies to be used and possibly an addition to team mode! Strafe can be used both offensively and defensively and an amazing strategy all together! Note this is not used anywhere other than being used in that month's ACW event and a short amount of time in the modding space mod of Nautic Series.

### Use Good Ships

Good ships lead to good victory!
The Best Ships at each mod (more in the future)
Howler
U-Barricade
U-Afterburn
U-Smasher
Harpy

For a walktrough, click these links
NukePhysics
https://m.youtube.com/c/NukePhysics

Thiên vn Gaming

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCenTq4Cv3maVu3JLTow6oUw

X-27

https://m.youtube.com/c/X-27yt