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I have successfully managed to get 4 upgrades in one day within the first week, and 2 upgrades every day after on average. (within the first 7 days only...after which it is much more difficult to maintain). My best week ever would be 16-17 upgrades for week 1.
My little tips:
1) Prioritize asteroid destruction over enemy clusters. (they are worth more bonus).
2) Take no shield upgrades during week 1.
3) Loose the shield as quickly as possible (ideally on day 3). Loose it to the missile commander enemy so you can more easily keep your Conservation bonus. Reap the benefit of the commando (no shield for a day) bonus the day after.
4) Conservation bonus every day during week 1 is essential. It's a whopping bonus for not letting anything hit the ground.
5) Don't be afraid to nuke early, and snag those stockpile nukes with your extra bonus points early on. By doing so you can end up with over 30-40 nukes at the end of week 1. It's a huge head start.
6) If you mess up your conservation bonus by letting the ground take a hit, make up for it with the "sitting duck" bonus. During week one you can sometimes lvl up 3 times per day if you strategically wait for enemy formations to collect and then nuke the center of the screen! Sitting ducks is a super easy bonus, even though you reduce nuke stock, I believe early game it is totally worth it.
4 in a day
https://ibb.co/wSL7KS5
It's actually just 7 days! Doing the first week without nukes is pretty doable. The electric flares are pretty nice, since they recharge during a day up to max stockpile of 3 flares! But god help you if the shield falls, because then your arc flail stops as well...
I wonder though are there any other global strategies?
Early game (weeks 1-2) - prioritize getting as many rewards as possible (for more, faster upgrades). Mid-game (weeks 3-4), prioritize surviving while minimizing nuke usage. Late game, survive at any cost - eventually hemorrhaging nukes just to survive 1 more day.
For upgrades, I use the normal triple shot upgrade path (no berseker, no operation hermit). Shields, blackout protocol, and nukes keep me alive late game. Always prioritize weapon upgrades above all else. Only unlock 1 tech at a time to minimize number of upgrades available at 1 time, so weapon upgrades are much more likely to show up and can be bought as soon as they become available. Technology order: nuclear weapons lab, advanced materials lab (actually, get this as soon as it shows up, for superconducting mag rail), plasma physics lab, institute of automation. Always prioritize damage over range when it comes to arc flail and laser turrets. Pulse reflex is one of the best upgrades in the game - it can deflect a lot of bombs which means you don't need to worry about those ones.
The game is all about threat prioritization, which can be counter-intuitive. Nukes should be used to manage threats which can't otherwise be dealt with, but should only be used when necessary. Late-game, nukes are traded for survival longevity (and thus, score).
Nukes should be timed correctly for maximum effectiveness. For example, when nuking an enemy with a shield, you should fire the nuke while the shield is up, shortly before it will come back down. When firing at a group of enemies, you should wait at least until the group has mostly assembled in formation.
The greatest threat in the game, which should basically always be nuked, are the blue pac-mans. Their missile barrage is so oppressive that I'm not sure I can ever survive it without nukes/blackout protocol.
Probably the second-greatest threat, late-game, is the purple nuke eaters. They deny the strategic use of nukes, which can be the difference between survival and losing the city. Late game, if they are around, you want to consider nuking medium threats while the nuke eaters are cloaked or out of position, because you might not get another chance.
The formations of enemies which drop the shielded rainbow bombs aren't actually a great threat by themselves, and are actually easier to deal with when other enemy formations are around. Although your rail gun can't detonate the rainbow bombs, enemy bombs can detonate them, so the easiest way to deal with them (without the use of a nuke) is to get normal bombs to detonate clusters of rainbow bombs (exploiting enemy friendly fire). If they are the only enemy group present, you can usually deflect the bombs heading toward your shield, and eventually you'll be able to pick off enough fighters that they start to flee.
Generally, mid-game, if you can "tread water" (deflect and detonate just enough bombs to keep the shield safe), you will eventually pick off all the enemies. However, ground-based enemies (especially tanks) can overwhelm, so in such a situation, I'll usually nuke tanks when they show up, and just tread water until all the flying threats are dealt with. For shielded tanks, it's usually worth waiting until their shield is up, and just about to come down before nuking.
You can also become overwhelmed when "treading water" if there are too many missiles (slow or fast), because it can become infeasible to deal with all of them. In that case, you might need to nuke a boss enemy or two which is spamming them. Alternatively, if there are so many boss enemies firing missiles, that can make it easier to cause them to self-detonate. It's pretty situational. The slow missiles don't need to be destroyed, but can just be deflected.
When treading water (or really, anytime during the game), you want to maximize the effectiveness of your rail gun. This means firing at the current highest-priority target, and ignoring enemies or bombs which aren't currently a threat. The more effectiveness you can get out of your rail gun, the fewer nukes you need to use. Ground-based enemies are particularly dangerous because of the time it takes your rail gun to rotate to face them, vs aiming into the sky. Retargeting ground vs air can waste precious milliseconds of damage (or rainbow bomb deflection), which can be the difference between surviving and losing the city.
For bombers, I'll wait until the bombs start homing on the city, and drop a nuke in their path. That'll ignite the first bombs, which should chain-ignite the others. If the shield is at max, I won't waste the nuke and just fire at the first bombs, in hopes I can ignite them before they hit the shield. Even if one does hit the shield, they should chain-react and only have a single impact (the first collision).
Jellyfish are usually high priority, especially if they are charging up. Late game, charging jellyfish probably need to be nuked, although if it's just 1 or 2 jellyfish, and you have a laser tower up, it's not as critical, because they should target that instead of your city. You can learn to predict roughly when and where they will uncloak, so if there aren't a lot of other threats, you can anticipate and aim ahead of time.
In summary, my goal mid- and late-game is to do more with less (fewer nukes), which primarily revolves around threat-prioritization.
This was a very well thought out explanation of your strategy. Great idea to "pre-nuke" a shielded target before the shield is down. I can take that to the bank. For those reading that don't understand the concept, Plant is referring to the fact that your nuclear blast (with upgrades) has a longer fall-out time. Meaning the blast lingers in the air before dissipating. When an enemy lowers shields during a well timed nuke, the fallout sphere will still be lingering so that they essentially open themselves up to the blast damage. It's a great strategy and will help you avoid throwing a nuke early only to have them raise shields before it gets there. (common in late game)
....and you just gave me a great idea for another nuke upgrade... One that has no travel delay ;D
And yes, some runs of the game seem absolutely brutal right out of the box. One of my last runs I couldn't believe it. I had 12 Jellies attack me and I think it was only lvl 3. hahaha. This game might benefit from a difficulty setting. One that offers substantially more bonus points per lvl, at the expense of greater enemy difficulty. (while still aiming to keep the game balanced)
If there are any upgrades that stop becoming available (I can think of one), I'd be interested in knowing exactly what their final days of availability are (i.e. you pick it before the game says "Day X" because that's the very last moment you can).
Ditto for any upgrades that don't unlock until a certain day.
Ditto for any upgrades that get permanently locked out due to other chosen upgrades.
Ditto for upgrade trees. In some cases, I can never really tell if an upgrade is stubbornly unavailable because of sheer bad luck or because I haven't bought the right stuff yet.
Lesser minutiae like the first possible appearance of given enemies would also be useful to know, though perhaps not necessarily all that well understood.
To my knowledge there is NO specific "final day" that any single upgrade stops becoming available. Instead, availability is based on other factors (what path you are in, and what upgrades you have currently obtained). That's it.
While I haven't documented things exhaustively I can tell you that the only thing I have noticed in this respect is that the only day-specific limitation I have seen in upgrade paths is with the rail-gun. In the current build 0.656, the dps upgrades are not available until after day 3 regardless of how many prior upgrade points you have obtained. I have gained 7 in the 1st 2 days before and it forces me to go down the automation path, plasma, or nuke paths only. After that it is mostly based on the sequential acquisition of skills in a given path. Each path seems to have a minimal requirement of # of skills obtained in it before a specific research is opened. OR, a specific # of upgrades overall that you must have obtained.
Many would say this specifically applies only to the game play path options Hermit and Berzerker. If you travel down one of those roads you will forgo specific upgrade trees in exchange for more. When the path options appear you can select the "review" text at the bottom to see specifically what skills will unlock. Additionally, you will loose the trees associated with the skills forfeited (e.g. No Nuclear skill tree in Hermit, and no Plasma/shield/flare/flail tree in Berzerker.)
Ditto the above explanation. Generally it is because of the path you are on. Alternatively it can ALSO have to do with bad rolls. Do not be afraid to expend your rerolls. They refresh nearly every couple waves, and you will notice that many research paths also unlock more rerolls/"citizen proposals". Some research trees may have specific day triggers like you mentioned....but I'm having trouble recalling at the moment because (as you have pointed out) it seems no one has really been doing detailed documentation yet. (or at least not posting it). I believe Coil gun is one of those cases, as well as the advanced materials options. I'll be sure to pay closer attention as I play and note it.
First possible appearance of UFO is Day 1.
First day for Larger Missile Command enemies Day 3.
The Calamari pretty much always happens for the first time on the same exact day...but at the moment I don't recall what that was ^_^ Same for Tank enemies and bubble enemies and rainbow bomb enemies and also that fast bomb carrier that zips across the screen with a bombardment. I haven't been personally counting the days...but this would be a good place to post your own findings ^_^
Usually day 33-35 is when you begin really getting slammed with the shield zapping squids.
Blunderbuss (the current maximum firepowered railgun) requires entering the Berzerker Charter and maxing out all your railgun upgrades.
If there is a specific path/upgrade you are trying to find the way to, just ask and I'm sure someone can spell out the path for you. For a while I was nerding out on all this and had a master spreadsheet going for paths etc., but it's been on the backburner ;D Mostly because this game is currently in its infancy, and so it will be changing quite a bit. In fact, the next update is supposed to be a game play update!
This feels like nothing less than a pair of shinies in a row would enable it.
I can at least think of choosing between green and cobalt blue bullets. Choosing one definitely locks out the other. Unless, of course, my lack of complete knowledge here is leading me to a bad observation.
Yeah, see, this information isn't documented and it's the micro-details that are really needed if one is to do any better than simply playing the game largely on whim.
Your earlier note about DPS not unlocking until day 4 does clear up some things, though. I get that the dev wanted to force a certain amount of balance but I would have to judge that this one feels arbitrarily enforced.
That reminds me. When the high score tables get implemented, another thing that would be extremely useful (I would say necessary) to implement in each score's row, alongside an icon indicating mouse and/or controller, is an indicator of game revision. Since there will be unavoidable differences in difficulty between revisions.