Outpost 6, etc.

On September 23, 2014, Kixeye released an update that might be the biggest since the game was released.  I'll try to help make sense of it.

Higher Building Levels 
The following things may be upgraded in your base:

Outpost 6: 16d 6h 27m
Dock 11: 3d 7h 12m
Turret 5: 10d 4h 41m

Weapons Lab 11: 3d 13h 16m

Naval Lab 11: 3d 13h 16m

Advanced Lab 11 4d 16h 19m

Intel Lab 11: 5d 0h 17m

Resource Generator Level 11: 1d 7h 40m

(times are with Construction Expert officer)

The useful upgrades (for high level players) are the first three.  If we include building and upgrading the additional 2 turrets available with Outpost 6, the total build time for Outpost, Dock, and Turrets is over 185 days, or 8,894 coins (give or take a few).  For those of you who wish to coin it, thank you for supporting the game and keeping the squeeze off of the rest of us.

Of course, that 185 days also assumes that you aren't putting any armor, tactical fields, or new specials on your turrets or buildings, and that you aren't building those Executioners, Gargoyles, or any other new turret weapons you've won.

I put the Weapons Lab 11 in its own group, since there are some new weapons available to be researched in that lab - Howitzer 5, Cerberus 5, and Victory Mortar 5.  The other Lab upgrades have no usefulness (yet).

Outpost 6 allows 2 more turrets, 5 more land squares, 30 more walls, and 2 more of each resource generator.  Enables Dock to 6, and Labs and Resource Generators to 11.

So what is the best use of your time?

Clearly Outpost 6 is the first upgrade, since it enables all the others.  Dock 6 should be done next, as having a bigger guard fleet weight will improve your defense potential just as much as another turret, and bigger fleets will also be very useful for everything else you do.  After those two upgrades, players will have to choose between constructing Tactical Fields, Turret Armor, Turrets, and Weapons.

(Edit: The Dock 11 upgrade increases the dock repair time from 2 hours to 4 hours... so be warned)

Building the two extra turrets to Level 4 quickly is probably a good idea, since they should only take 2 days each for the turret platform.  After that, putting a quick-build weapon on top like a Gargoyle might be best to get going on those turrets.  

Without recommending specific upgrades, I would upgrade such that specific choke points within the base are upgraded (instead of spreading upgrades around).  Group armor and upgraded turrets together in the field of fire of weapons & guards that deal a lot of damage, so attacking fleets are slowed the most at the point where your weapons are most effective.  Adding Fire Support fields that boost multiple turrets on the center island are also a good use of construction time for base defense.

All of these upgrades require uranium, so the already severe uranium demand will just keep going up.  I'm going to put in a pitch here AGAINST making uranium lootable.  I think that lootable uranium will only make the difference between the high end and low end players worse, and I can imagine a lot of players quitting if they get hit repeatedly for their uranium.  This will make them feel "locked-out" of even having a chance to catch up.

Max Fleet Weight (Dock 11):
With Dock 11, the maximum fleet weight increases from 27,548 to 31,756 tons.  This is a weight increase of 4,208 tons.  The maximum ships weights for even fleets is now:

	Dock 11	Dock 10
Max Fleet weight	31,756	27,548
5 Ship Fleet per ship	6,351	5,509
4 Ship Fleet per ship	7,939	6,887
3 Ship Fleet per ship	10,585	9,182

So you have three options to take advantage of the new maximum fleet weight:  Build new fleets, retrofit your old fleets, or add a new ship to 3 / 4 ship fleets.  I'll take a quick look at the third option.  

To take advantage of the 4,208 tons you get, you could build a "baby" version of the ships you are using, or you could add a specialist ship.  The two roles I thought of for specialists are Countermeasure or Tank.

For a Countermeasure Ship, you would like enough weapon slots, speed & turn to nearly match (but generally be a little less than) your main fleet, and one weapon with a longer range than the weapons on your main fleet. The Negotiator Mortar 1 used to be my favorite weapon for that, but with launchers and UAVs, those don't have enough range any more - you really need a UAV now for this.  This means than the Triton is probably the best ship for this, but other hulls that might work would be the Super Fortress or the Floating Fortress A.  Those will take less build time than the Triton.

A Super Fortress example is shown above.  If you wanted to use Anti-mortar instead, Countermeasure Loaders would be the better special (for higher anti-mortar accuracy) instead of Countermeasure Equipment.  Turn and Speed armor could be used to match maneuverability characteristics to the fleet (whatever it is) a little better if desired.  Strike System could be used for more accuracy, but at the cost of turn speed, which will hurt against raid & mission targets if you try to keep your fleet together.

If using a Triton, you have more armor and weapon slots to work with, so you could use more smaller countermeasure weapons (mix Phalanx and Hailstorms), and also take advantage of more Turn & Speed armor.

The link below provides some starting points for build ideas.
http://www.dahippo.com/bp/ship/#!703050U0U0U0U2B1S1B1B1O1B1B1B03O50U0U0U2N1S4N4N4N4N1O4N04100R0R0L0L0L2N1S004M4M4M4M1A1A1O4M1A1A0ZZ0ZZ

For a Decoy ship, the new retrofitted Juggernaut X is a fantastic choice.  I used one of these very successfully in the Frostbite Event.  With this build, you want your speed to be equal to or faster than your main fleet, and you want your weapon to have shorter range.  My initial build used all Impact Cannon R, but I refit to the following & had more success:

The evade of this ship is 83.2% without any retrofits.  The Diplomat 1 is light and gives this ship enough "standoff" to allow you to select the whole fleet and just click on targets.  The Phalanx 2 give some missile resistance along with the missile shootdowns.  This ship is great fun to use and just over 9 days to build.

Retrofit Lab:

The other big change is that many new items (specials and weapons) have been added to the Retrofit Lab, including researchable (non-prize) items.  The Berzeker hull was also added to the Retro Lab.  Its changes are mostly additions to resistance and evade, which are nice but not a huge deal.  The Uranium cost is very high for the Berserker - over 150,000 Uranium is required at R5.

Overall, you should look at retrofitting weapons, specials, and armors that you use a lot.  

For this article, I'll just point out a few new highlights.  In a later article, I'll try to run through all the options for retrofit, and identify some good ones to consider (assuming you use that weapon/armor/special).

Highlights:
Impulse Launchers - increase Accuracy and Fire Rate - each stat will help you get a shockwave more quickly.

Fire Support Cannon Turret (Javelin & Harpoon) - increase Damage - that's what they are there to do.

Maneuverability Systems (Guidance Scrambler, Thrusters, Evade Upgrade) - increase Evade and Turn Speed - I always like more evade.  

Explosive Systems - increase splash, projectile speed, rocket reload - many, many specials are affected.  You're bound to find some you like to use.

Engine Systems - (Engine Upgrade, Speed Upgrade, Unstable Core, Reaver Scout Engine ) - increase speed - notable because the basic Engine Upgrades are now included

UAV Systems (UAV Powercells) - If you use Powercells and want a UAV boost, spend the Uranium here, not on the UAV weapon.

Evade Armor - not new, but now includes D5-E

Lowlights:

UAVs - increase Swarm Duration - unless the increase in swarm duration crosses the threshold to allow another shot from the drone, this increase is of zero benefit.

Countermeasure Turret - increase Range - this isn't terrible, but be careful.  Although the picture looks like a Coaxial, the Coax Turret is not included in the list.

Plate Armors (all) - just not much of a benefit.


In Closing....  some players are discouraged with all the new items and the uranium cost.  I would just suggest you play at your own rate, prioritize what's important, and don't worry about the players that are coining it all.  Thank them for supporting the game so you don't have to, and remember that no one can hit you so hard that your repair button breaks. 

Big Updates to base defense: Armor, Tacticals, and Power

The update is here, and I'll summarize what has changed and what has not changed.

Kixeye release notes are here: https://www.kixeye.com/forum/discussion/495321

What has not changed:

• Outpost is still maxed at level 5
• Dock is still maxed at level 10 (no increase in fleet weight)

Note that the "teaser" said that these things are coming: https://www.kixeye.com/forum/discussion/493270/p1

What has changed:

• Base Armor is researchable in the Naval Lab, and may be mounted on:
• Level 4 Turrets (1 slot)
• Level 10/11/12 Warehouses (1 slot at level 10 & 11, 2 at level 12)
• Level 3(?) and up Outpost (2 slots at Level 4, 3 slots at Level 5)
• Base Tactical Installations are researchable in the Tactical Lab, and one may be mounted on: 
• Level TBD Resource Generators (Level 5 is too low)
• Level 11/12 Warehouses
• Level 10 Labs
• Level 4/5 Outpost (unknown if Level 3 gets one)
• The following building is now 6x6:
• Outpost
• The following buildings are now 5x5: 
• Intel Lab
• Naval Lab
• Weapons Lab
• Warehouses
• Advanced Lab
• The following buildings are now 4x4:
• Great Hall
• Land-based Resource Generators
• Launch Pad
• Academy
• Other size changes:
• Radio Tower (3x3)
• Trading Post (3x3)
• Tactical Lab (11x11)
• Shipyard (8x8)
• Dock (8x8)
• Bases have a power rating.  Turret weapons, Armor, and Tactical Installations consume power.  Turret specials give a % modifier to power consumed.
• Base Defense weapon changes:
• Gargoyle (increased Splash/Spread)
• Coaxial Turret (~20% damage decrease)
• Harpoon (damage doubled)
• Meteor Mortar (Fire pool damage triples)
• Napalm Missile (Fire pool damage 5x)
• Arc Missile (range now 40-130, damage now 520/720/880)

Building Size Changes:
Although there are no new turrets or land tiles available, the reduced building sizes resulted in 10 land tiles being freed up in my base design.  This may vary between base designs, but with that much more land available, we may see new breeds of base design soon.

Tactical Installations

Tactical Installations are researched in the Tactical Lab.  There are currently three available types:

Hidden Cache
Protects resources
Level 1 (2d8h research): 34 power, 1M resources protected
Warehouse bonus: 2M resources protected

Combined Defense 
Friendly effect - Upgrades Turret Defense
Level 1 (2d22h research): 178 power, 46 range, +20% Ball/Exp/Pen Defense

Fire Support 
Friendly Effect - Upgrades Turret Attack
Level 1 (4d16h research): 493 power, 30 range, +10% Exp/Ball/Pen/Rad/Concuss damage
Outpost, Warehouse bonus: +10% Exp/Ball/Pen/Rad/Concuss reload

All of these are available immediately, and no uranium is required for the research.  We will likely see more types of tactical installations in the future, possibly as research or more likely as prizes, since these are designated as "level 1", and when installing the tactical installation, there is a tab for Researched installations and a tab for Blueprints (empty).

Since resources are not very hard to get at any level anymore, the usefulness of installing Hidden Cache is fairly low.  If uranium becomes lootable, then a "hidden cache" for uranium might become very important.

The obvious usages of the other two tactical installations are: Combined Defense for the front-line, short-range turrets (Cerberus, Disruptor, etc.), and Fire Support for the center island turrets (Javelin, Brimstone, Halo, Victory Mortar, etc.).  

To take advantage of Combined Defense, you will need a building with a Tactical Installation within range 46 (2 land tiles + 1.5 walls center-to-center). We may see resource generators or warehouses embedded within long channels to use Combined Defense, instead of just filling the channel with walls.  If setting up a channel this way, look out for guard ship placement because you want to be sure they are protected behind walls.  If using a warehouse, be careful because shockwaves can be triggered on warehouses, but not resource generators.

Using Fire Support should be more straightforward, since the center island usually contains the Outpost in addition to the Turrets.   With the 6x6 OP size and the 3x3 turret size, the 30 range is adequate to cover any turret touching the outpost (when corner to corner, the center-center range between a OP & a turret is 25.4), but not a whole lot further.

One more possible usage would be to use Fire Support to bolster reload time of Coaxial Turrets in the front line.  This would likely require embedded warehouses in the channel.

The video as part of the release notes states that the buffs from Tactical Installations stack, so consider that.

It is unclear if the effect of the tactical installations remains after the building with the installation is destroyed.  I am assuming it would go away, so consider installing the tactical installation behind the turret(s) being buffed.

Armor Slot
Base armor is researched in the Naval Lab.  There are three levels of Iron, Steel, Titanium, and depleted Uranium armor.  Each must be researched in order, and no uranuim is required for the research.  Armor provides additional armor points, and Kixeye has stated that those armor points do NOT affect base % damaged for bubble/medal purposes.

The following chart shows the armor points and power required for each type:

Type	Level	Protection	Power	Prot/Power
Iron	1	400	34	11.76
Iron	2	800	67	11.94
Iron	3	1200	101	11.88
Steel	1	1500	126	11.90
Steel	2	3000	253	11.86
Steel	3	4500	379	11.87
Titanium	1	5000	421	11.88
Titanium	2	7500	632	11.87
Titanium	3	10000	842	11.88
Depleted Uranium	1	12000	683	17.57
Depleted Uranium	2	17000	968	17.56
Depleted Uranium	3	22000	1252	17.57

When power becomes limited, you can see that Depleted Uranium is more efficient than the other researched armor types, which are all just about equivalent to each other.  With a Level 4 turret having 10,600 health, the DU1 more than doubles turret health, and DU3 more than triples turret health.  

The best place to place armor is on the front-line turrets.  Armoring center island turrets, Warehouses, and Outposts is less useful, since most fleets that reach those targets have just about beaten the base anyway.  Armoring the Outpost may be useful at low levels, since sometimes low-level base fleets will timeout when hitting the Outpost. We may see more fleets having to stop to kill heavily armored turrets in the front line, so Brimstones and Halos may become more useful again.  

Power
Power is how Kixeye limits the amount of upgrades you can install in your base buildings. It is not generated by any base buildings, and cannot be degraded during an attack (unlike War Commander).  Total base power is limited at 52,000 for Outpost 4 & Outpost 5. I'm not sure if lower level outposts allow lower amounts of total power.  

Buildings also have individual power limits:
Outpost: 3875
Warehouse: 1500
Turret: 3700
Lab: 1750
Resource Generator: 750

So far, it looks like all of the power limits are independent of building level.

Just as a reference, my Level 36, Outpost Level 4 base is using 3,828/52,000 power, and my Level 75 Outpost 5 base is using 36,256/52,000 power.  

A Javelin Turret with Priority Targeting is using 3,132/3,700 power, so any armor beyond Titanium 1 doesn't work for that turret.  A Coaxial Turret with CM targeting is using 2,732/3,700 power (supports DU1), and a Cerberus with Fire Support X is using 855 power (any armor).  You can see that advanced turrets won't be able to support the highest armor types due to the turret power limit, but basic ones might.  I would try to focus on DU armor, since that is more power efficient.

I don't think power limits will come into play too heavily until reaching high levels of technology.

Base Defense Weapons changes:
I'm going to give some quick impressions, then do more side-by-side analysis in a later article.

Gargoyle: with Splash 18/Spread 80, this is now usable for its intended purpose and may also be effective against blitzing fleets.
Vulture: Damage went up by 2.5x.  This may be a lot more usable now. 
Harpoon: Damage is doubled, so it may now be considered a baby Javelin.  With only a 30% slow effect, it still isn't a primary choice.
Coaxial: reduced damage means it is less effective than before at dealing damage.  Although the countermeasures from the Coax are nice, I don't think its DPS potential was ever reached in practice anyway.
Meteor Mortar: The fire pool is now more deadly - 300 points per second instead of 100.  In conjunction with ships possibly needing to stop more often, this may help
Napalm: The fire pool is now 300 instead of 100 points per second.  I've seen some bases that relied very heavily on napalms, and generally blown through them.  This upgrade MIGHT help that strategy.
Arc Missile: I have never lost to a base that used any Arc Missiles.  Increasing the Arc 3 damage from 624 to 880 probably won't change that.
Cerb/VM/Sent/Howy: Ranges standardized at level 4 values.  This helps low level players only.

Overall: 
I'm excited for new wrinkles in base defense, and hopefully bases won't be so cookie-cutter.  In the near term, I expect to see players figuring out the best ways to use these new upgrades, and also to see some new upgrades released through Raids, Forsaken Missions, and maybe even Drac Base blueprints.  For that reason, I would not recommend a rush to coin these upgrades, since you may want to replace them very soon with prizes instead of researched items.  Don't forget to reallocate officers to Naval and/or Tactical research if you are interested in a bit of a speed up.

BP for Noobs part 3 - Base defense

OK as promised, I'll put up an article for base defense for the new players.

I'm going to focus on defense at Outpost Level 3 and Level 4.  At Level 2, you don't really have enough land to put any sort of these techniques together, and you really shouldn't be there for long anyway.

Right now with a day and a half left on my bubble, I am Level 29 with Outpost 4, Level 7 Weapons Lab, Level 7 Naval Lab, and 3 Level 7 Warehouses.  I have 5 Level 3 turrets, 7 Level 2 (and I plan to get at least 2 more to Level 3 before I lose my bubble).

So to break down base defense in Battle Pirates, you must understand the three types of turrets: Long Range, Short Range, and Defensive.  There is no "Best" turret, and a base defense will not work (maybe sometimes, but not often) if it tries to depend on only a single type of turret.

Long Range Turrets: These are intended to be the real damage dealers to enemy fleets.  These turrets are the Sentinel Missile and the Victory Mortar.  The Sentinel is an aimed weapon that fires a damaging missile at enemy ships.  Low level players will depend on the Sentinel much more than high level - you usually won't see this turret in high level bases.  The Victory Mortar fires a salvo of mortar shells, doing splash damage in an area.  This can damage all ships in the attacking fleet simultaneously if they are stacked up (which base attackers usually are), but moving fleets can often outrun the shells.

Short Range Turrets: The short range turrets can do even more damage than the long range turrets, but most base attack weapons (mortars and missiles) will outrange them.  The Howitzer is a rapid fire ballistic weapon that aims shots at a single target.  The Cerberus is a rocket platform firing a salvo of rockets at close range.  The Cerberus is extremely destructive, and a sure fire way for a novice to lose their base fleet is to drive into range of a Cerberus.  "Red means stop!"

The way short range weapons work is that they force the attacking fleet to stop outside the turret's range in order to avoid taking the damage.  A smart base layout will figure out the places where an attacker must stop, and place long range turrets so that they can fire at those spots.  The best way to estimate range is to use a Howitzer.  Its range is slightly shorter than most base attack weapons, so click on the gun, look at the red circle showing its range, then figure base attack fleets will stop near, but outside of that circle.  You can (temporarily) move the howitzer around to see the stop points for different turret locations.

Defensive Turrets: Flak turrets defend against missiles.  Each shot of a flak turret gives some splash, so it will take out incoming missiles across a small area.  Bombard turrets defend against mortars, so the bombard shots will blunt the damage from an incoming mortar attack.  None of these defensive turrets is perfect, they can get overwhelmed by sustained fire, but their purpose is to slow down attackers even more by forcing them to take more time to destroy the turrets.

I'll post pictures of an Outpost 3 and an Outpost 4 layout to try to illustrate some principles of base defense.

My Outpost 3 design (never tested):

Since I knew I could reach OP 4 before my bubble popped, I never finished my weapons while using this base design.  The basic idea of this base is that the front row of turrets would be short range turrets, and the back row would be long range.  The double wall really helps against ballistic fleets, which are sometimes used for base hits by low level players (not so often at high levels).

I protected only the warehouses and the Outpost on land.  My dock is also in a fairly well protected area.  Although it would be snipable by players with tech like SFB3 Assault Missiles, Launchers, or UAVs, other players around level 28 would not have the capability.

This base design certainly has some weaknesses - the double row of turrets means that splash (mortars) that are directed at the first row of turrets may also damage the second row.  Also, the placement of the outpost means that ships don't have to go all the way around the channel and island to reach the outpost - it could be reached from just halfway down the entrance channel.  

My Outpost 4 design makes use of more land, and is a more generally solid design:

The short range, long range, and defensive turrets are placed in order to work together.

This picture shows the turret ranges.  I drew a line to highlight the first Howitzer's range circle.  A ship stopping to shoot at that Howitzer outside its range circle will be in range of 3-4 of my Victory Mortars.  As a fleet moves further in, it will come into range of the fifth VM and also the Sentinel.  

My defensive turrets are placed centrally to cover the maximum number of turrets, and are not exposed to early fire.

The bombard range is fairly short, but will improve to the forward Cerberus turret once I add Enhanced Propulsion:

Flak turrets have better range - this flak can cover all of my short range turrets, and even two more on the center island.

You can also see I used a guard fleet - since I have advanced through the early game so quickly, I haven't had time to build a decent guard fleet, which should consist of heavily armored ships with long range weapons.  The longships really show where you COULD put guard ships in this base design.  Mortars would work best, since you probably don't have good enough specials at Level 30 to let Missiles match the range of Mortars.  Mortars will also add to the volume of shells being fired, which will help overwhelm any anti-mortar defenses that the attackers may carry.

So let's see how this base works in action:

Chrissy had taken some damage prepping the other side of my base - a Thud Battlecruiser did that to her lead ship.  She makes two mistakes going in - one is that she doesn't take the time at the outset to stack her fleet up (press up arrow to select all ships, then click a spot).  The other is that she presses ahead into the short range turrets.  You can see this at 1:18, where the lead ship stops outside the howitzer range, and it looks like she is waiting to stack up.  But she realizes she is already being fired at by the Victory Mortars, so she presses ahead.  Eventually you can see the mortar fire take out her trailing ships (starting at 1:33).  When spread out like that, the mortars that fire on the lead ship will tend to hit the ones in the rear, even if you are moving.  After that she keeps going, and the Sentinel and the Cerberus finish her off.

I hope this helps to introduce a little bit about base defense for the new players.  Watch your playbacks, look for what worked and what didn't, and make adjustments.