Beginner's guide to winning Infinity:Battlescape

In this guide oriented towards beginners and small groups of players, you'll learn the rules of the game, the mechanics around missions and battles, the role of the AI Commander, and your part in helping your faction succeed in gaining control over the solar system.

Foreword

This guide gives the player an overview of the rules of the game and mission mechanics. Without going into too much details, it presents each concept so a small group of players (1-5) can lead their faction to victory.

As of this writing, Infinity:Battlescape is still in Alpha and under active development. The contents discussed in this guide apply to version 0.7.9.1 of the game and are subject to change.

This guide is based on information given by the developers on the game's forum.[forums.inovaestudios.com] This guide glosses over some mechanics described in more details in the post: e.g. the allocation of credits across the various pool or how mission objectives are determined. Rather, this guides focus on how a player can approach the game to help his faction win, knowing these rules.

Rules of the game

Infinity:Battlescape is set in a distant solar system. The conflict is fought over battlescapes: strategic locations of its solar system where stations, factories and bases are in proximity. Two factions, the Havoc and the Scoria, vie for control over its bases and resources in an all out war.

Currently, there is a single playable battlescape around the gas giant Rethe Prime and its moons. To win the game, the player must help his faction conquer battlescapes. A faction wins when it overpowers or destroys all bases of its opponent before its own. As soon as the game is won, the countdown to a new game begins.

Scoring

Every time you log into a game for the first time, you are greeted with the choice of your faction. The current score of each faction can be seen above the faction selection screen.

The score of each faction is based on the number of bases it controls, with each based contributing a different amount of point based on its strategical value. The faction with the highest score, is currently leading the battle.

Type of base	Victory Points
Small base	250
Medium base	400
Large base	800

Winning conditions

There are two conditions to win a battlescape:

1. All opponent's bases are destroyed (before it's own) or its score falls to zero
   
2. The opponent has been overpowered: its score fell below a quarter of the leading faction's score.

Destroying Enemy Bases

Enemy bases can be destroyed either:

1. Manually, by destroying enough base modules.
   
2. Automatically, through critical missions: bases are immediately destroyed when critical missions are won (for the attacking side) or lost (for the defending side).

Bases are made up of various components, a.k.a. modules: defenses, hangars, turrets, habitats, etc. With enough damage dealt to a module, it will become destroyed. Each module contributes a certain amount of health points to the base. Past a certain threshold of health point lost, the base is considered destroyed and all its modules are rendered as destroyed. Manually destroying a module also earns a small amount of credits to the player. All modules are automatically destroyed if a base is not defended during a critical mission.

Credits, the sinews of war

Once you've picked a faction to fight for, take note of your available credits. As a player, the first thing you learn in game is to kill opponents so you can earn credits for yourself and upgrade to larger vessels.

Unbeknownst to you, each faction is controlled by an AI Commander that is also earning and managing credits for his entire faction. The AI Commander manages several credits pools, where credits are drawn from by the AI Commander, for 3 purposes:

• Scouting new locations in the solar system. Once a certain amount of credits are accumulated into the scouting pool, the AI Commander will warp in an interceptor to scout new locations of the battlescape. This ensure that a battle is constantly raging around the battlescape, with new objectives constantly appearing.
  
• To make up the fleets of vessels that fight over the strategic objectives of the battlescape: a.k.a. missions. When a mission starts, the AI Commander allocates a portion of its faction's credits to the purchase of vessels that make up these fleets. This process is explained in greater details in the next section.
  
• To pay the players. Periodically, the AI Commander distributes credits to each players from the player's credit pool. The AI Commander always pays players by multiples of 25cr. When enough credits has accumulated in the pool to pay all players at least 25cr, the amount is deducted from the pool and all players receive their payments.

Credits are contributed to the faction's credit pools through these means:

• Haulers carry resources from planetary surface factories to space stations in orbit around every 5 minutes. When they successfully complete a trip to a space station, it earns the faction credits depending on the size of the factory: 600cr for small, 1200cr for medium and 2400cr for large factories.
  
• All bases generates a fixed amount of credits per minute for the team. The amount of credits generated depends again on the size of the base. Larger bases generate more credits per minutes than smaller ones.
  
• Winning a non-critical mission. Here too, the amount of credits contributed depends on the size of the base where the mission was taking place.
  
• An AI ships kills an opponent with a bounty on its head. The bounty is contributed to the faction's credit pool.
  
• Finally, when AI vessels retreat from an battle that ended and warp out of the area, their cost is returned to the faction's credit pool.

Missions & battle mechanics

As the fight rages on, you are invited to join missions and help conquer strategical objectives to tip the scale in the favor of your faction.

Missions

Periodically, missions are presented to either attack an enemy base or defending one of your own faction's. There are currently 2 kinds of missions:

• Regular missions, where the winning faction earns bonus credits that contribute to the faction's credit pool.
  
• Critical missions, where, instead of earning bonus credits for the winning side, loss of the fight for the defending faction results in the base being destroyed.

For each mission, both AI Commanders attempt to gather an equal amount of credits for the battle. The amount of credit invested on the battle varies based on the size of the objective. Towards the end of a game, there may not be enough credits available to a faction, and the battle will be unbalanced.

To ensure the game remains balanced for the most part of its progress, the leading faction has higher chance of having to defend critical objectives compared to the trailing faction.

Unfolding of battles

When a battle starts, forces of each factions warp in (a.k.a. spawn) in directions of the base targeted (the mission's objective) as if they came from the nearest faction controlled station. In the course of the battle, multiple waves will be send by the AI Commander of each faction.

Credits invested in the battle are not spent at once. At the start of the battle, around 50% of credits invested are converted into a fleet that forms the first wave, while the remaining value is held in reserve.

After that first wave, all other waves warp in according to the following rule: as soon as the credit value of the current fleet is less than 50% of the remaining credits, 50% of the remaining credit reserve is converted into the next reinforcement wave. And so on, until the amount of credits left goes below around 500cr.

Supposing that a battle starts with 12000cr for a faction, it could unfold in this way:

• At the start (t0), the fleet has an overall value of 6000cr, while 6000cr are held in reserve.
  
• At t1, the fleet value dropped below 3000cr. The AI Commander brings in a new wave worth 3000cr to the battle, bumping its fleet value to 6000cr, but lowering its reserve pool down to 3000cr.
  
• At t2, the fleet value now dropped below 1500cr, so a new wave worth 1500cr warps into to the battle, and 1500cr is left in the reserve pool.
  
• At t3, the fleet value dropped again below 750cr, so a new wave worth 750cr warps into to the battle, and 750cr is left in the reserve pool.

And so on...

Composition of the fleet entering the battle

The make up of each fleet is random. However, to ensure battles are balanced, once determined, each faction spawns equivalent fleet compositions.

The probability of a vessel to spawn in a fleet is inversely proportional to its cost, so interceptors are more common than bombers, destroyer more common than cruisers, etc. Only large battles will spawn a carrier.

Calculating the odds

The current odds of the battle are displayed at all times during the mission, on your HUD. These odds are calculated by comparing each faction's fleet's credit value and remaining credit reserve. Suppose that Havoc currently has a fleet worth 3000cr in the battle with 2000cr in reserve, while Scoria has fleet worth 2000cr with 1800cr in reserve, the odds will be 57% for Havoc and 43% for Scoria.

Achieving victory

Battles end on 2 conditions:

1. The entire fleet of a faction has been destroyed and the faction does not have enough credits to bring in a new fleet, resulting in a loss for that faction.
   
2. One faction has overpowered the other: this happens when the odds of a battle fall below 25% for a faction.

In either case, the countdown timer to the end of a battle begins. At this point or before it, the player should leave the battle and look for its next objective.

What is your role in all this?

Now that you've learnt about the game mechanics, what should you do then? This section assumes you are not part of a large group of coordinated players, but rather acting independently or with a small group of players (e.g. 1-5 players). Large groups of players will have a considerable influence on a faction's ability to succeed and can, for example, spontaneously decide to attack strategical objectives that are not presented in the game. This is not covered in this guide.

Understand the strategic value of the objectives

By now, you should have gathered the importance of the strategic value of an objective. Let's summarize; the larger the base...

• ...the more credits it contributes to the periodic credit pool of the AI Commander, and this compounds over time as the battle rages on,
  
• ...the more credits a hauler leaving that station will carry to another station; similarly, this compounds over time,
  
• ...the bigger the ships it can spawn for the player.

This last point is important: the strategic value of the large spawn points increases greatly for the player since they rarefy towards the end of a game. For example: if a game reaches a situation where Havoc is left with 1 large base, while Scoria has 2 medium bases, players in Scoria will not be able to spawn capital vessels (destroyer, cruisers or carrier) in spite of their higher score. This creates a large disadvantage for the player that wishes to influence the outcome of the game.

So it is critical that you prioritize your actions based on the strategic value of the missions presented, and you should always take part in missions with the largest strategical objective. The table below helps understanding the strategical value of an objective at a glance:

Type	Available Spawn Points
Factory (Fac)	Small, Medium (rare)
Base	Small, Medium (often)
Station (Stn)	Small, Medium, Large (usually)

Only once you've identified the battles with the largest strategical value, prioritize critical missions over non-critical ones. Check your mission screen regularly, even in the heat of a battle, to verify that you are engaged in the critical mission with the largest objective.

Attack or defend, what should I do?

For most part of the game, the mechanics of missions keep the game in balance such that it is difficult for a faction to acquire a comfortable lead, since the faction trailing in score is provided more opportunities for critical missions.

Thus, for the most part of the game, if you are being proposed two critical missions of equivalent strategical value, one to defend and the other to attack, choosing one or the other does not make a significant difference.

As the game transitions towards its ending, battles are becoming more unequal and one side tends to maintain a constant lead over the other. To help your faction retain its ability to spawn larger vessels, you should always prioritize the defense of your largest critical objectives.

Influencing the outcome of a battle

As a player, your degree of influence on the outcome of a battle directly depends upon the size of the vessel that you control to the battle.

To help your faction succeed, you should always fly the largest ship at your credit's pool disposal. This also ensure that credits obtained by your actions are not wasted since they cannot currently be transferred back to the AI Commander or the other players. If you have excess credits, do not hesitate to sacrifice event your largest vessel to cut down wraping time and remain engaged in battle.

(Note: the exception to the above rule is the carrier. The carrier's ability to influence a battle is currently limited in absence of a large number of human players.)

Since larger vessels (destroyers, cruisers and carrier) represent a much larger fleet value during a battle, loosing one quickly tips the odds of a battle and rapidly forces new reinforcement waves to arrive. Thus regardless of the vessel you are currently flying, you should take actions that contribute towards the destruction of the enemy's larger vessels or the safety of your own's:

Vessel type	Recommended actions (higher priority > mid priority > lower priority > etc)
Interceptor	Kill bombers > kill interceptors & protect your bombers > kill coverttes
Bombers	Kill Destroyers (these pesky lasers destroy your torpedoes) > kill cruisers > reload at ally corvette > kill ennemy corvettes
Corvette	Refill & protect ally bombers > kill ennemy bombers > kill corvettes
Destroyers	Kill destroyers > kill cruisers > kill carriers
Cruiser	kill carriers > kill cruiser > kill destroyers

When playing a large vessel, if you end up going down the food chain and hunting smaller vessel than yours, you've probably missed a more important strategical objective. After every few large vessel is been destroyed, check the odds of the battle and review the other available objectives as you should consider joining your next battle.