ASTROSWARM - What To Expect and Strategies

Some details around what you're going to see in ASTROSWARM, some strategies I stuck to and what I feel are priorities, and a Let's Play video with similar content.

Main Concepts

ASTROSWARM is an FPS (close to a boomer shooter), with elements from Rogelites and Tower Defense. It's a fairly simple game at it's core, but there's a lot of hidden action once you get a level or 2 into the game.

Main Objective: Defend your module (spaceship) from attacking enemies. Survive 5 waves, with a timer on the last one, without it getting destroyed, then jump in and escape.

The game has 2 in-round resources (Metal and Experience). Each resource has 2 sources. Metal comes from either a harvesting building or the dark green crystals you'll find spread across the map. Exp comes from killing enemies or from breaking light blue crystals. Crystals are broken by your melee attack to harvest. To get metal from buildings, you just need to be near it, and it'll transfer to your inventory.

Since defending your Module and escaping is your main goal, you'll quickly find that most rounds go pretty much the same, but it’s the map and the enemies that change. Maps start off with enemies spawn from one direction, and later become multi-sided, so now you're defending from all directions, And then enemies change: start shooting, flying, bombarding from the air, running fast, and get bigger and tougher. They also get more HP every wave.

Enemies start basic, but get progressively more complex and tougher as your move to new levels. The first ones are basic grunts, then large grunts, then shooting grunts. Later on you'll encounter flying ones that bombard your module and other ones that attack you, much larger, scarier ones that have a ton more hit points, and much faster grunt varieties that can keep up with you much better and are more aggressive.

Here's my Youtube video with all the following strats and a long Let's Play, or you can continue in this guide.

Let's talk about the game resources

EXPERIENCE POINTS

- Used for Power-Ups, Guns, or personal stats. Here I'll outline what my person priorities are for each.

Power Ups - my personal priorities is as follows:

1 Melee Speed Upgrade - This will speed up the rate that you break all crystals. This is a massive bonus to get as much metal as you can for the global upgrades and turret levels, and to get a couple extra experience levels per wave. I would try to get as many crystals as possible between rounds, and then run around the map to taunt enemies and get crystals, while my turrets would take the rest.

2 Health On Kill/Ammo on Kill - Either or both of these would be my next target to take as soon as I see it. Pretty self explanatory. While ammo and health does drop from enemies, it's not always convenient to run and get it. Killing for it is more efficient.

3 Weapon Elemental Damage - This ranges from ones that damage on hit, like lightning, or damage over time, like fire or irradiation, to dropped bombs on kill, or status changes like freezing. All of these have big potential to delay enemies getting to you module, so it's always a good idea to take.

4 Reloading Speed and Other Damage increases - Some power-ups affect your reload speed, or improve damage for a limited time after another action is taken. Many of these can be helpful situationally, and even better when combined together (like reduced reload speed and 2x damage after reload, partnered with higher rate of fire)

5 Various Buffs and Dash Effects - There's a number of others that trigger affects when you dash, or changes status effects on hit, and other similar things. I found the dash power-ups not so useful, where others were dependent on your play style, like melee damage. There's also ones that increase ammo loaded and other similar affects. Take as you see fit or as per your play style.

Guns
All seem to have the potential to be good. My personal favorite was probably the pulse rifle so far, because it penetrates enemies, great for taking out groups quickly. Each level you get has an opportunity to get a new gun, however there is a limit to how many guns you take per round.

Stats
The last option is changing the stats of your character. They will be Health, Defense, Movement Speed, or Damage. Pick whichever is best for you. I typically went with Damage first.

METAL

1 Building Material - Used to place buildings and turrets, then Upgrading, fixing, and filling ammo of your turrets. Game can end real fast if your turrets have no ammo or are destroyed.

2 Global Upgrades - Affects all buildings - 500 metal each time you take it.
Damage is the priority. Others are great, but the first few levels in damage are huge, starting at 25% and 20%. The others have options to add ammo and health regen, and additional health and ammo.

Out of game Resources

Each game you get awarded Plat, which is used to buy permanent upgrades.

Modifiers
- Obtained by meeting certain criteria. For example, Engineer, you have to you finish any level without taking any weapons. So just starting pistol and Turrets. However you turrents are a lot better than normal. Modifiers are basically risk vs reward changes. You get bonuses of some kind, but also some kind of limitation or risk. Play with any of these as you like.
- Check the Unlockables section for the criteria for each one.

Upgrades
THE MOST IMPORTANT UPGRADE IS THE BUILDING LIMIT. Each rank of this lets build you one more building, which is the biggest leap in power in the game.

All the rest are useful in some way, and you should take as you see fit. Health, module defense, better repairs, more starting metal, etc. Be sure to take the building upgrade every time you can.


That covers all the decisions you'll need to make during and between rounds.

Couple tips:

- The game has dashing AND jumping. I personally did not find any situation where jumping helped, EXCEPT when I put turrets to close to other buildings and I couldn’t walk past them. Dashing is much better in combat, and a lot of Power Ups are tied to dashing.
- Enemies can be taunted away from walking towards your module. If you walk out to the spawn areas, you can get them to chase after you.
- Use the time between waves to mine metal and exp nodes. You can get a couple levels each time, and enough for a global upgrade. Also do your best to clear the rest from the map during the wave before the next spawns and crystals refresh,
- You can't go over 999 metal! So don’t mine nodes till you use some.
- It doesn’t really matter if your module takes damage, because you can repair it. Watch the messages on the top of the screen to see it's health.
- Be sure to pick all the guns at some point. Wining a level with each gun typically unlocks something else. So be sure to pick all of them even if you don’t plan on using it.


That's everything I can think of to get your started! Will upgrade this guide as I find other good points of info or to make corrections.