Go Really Slow To Go Fast: How Long Does Leveling Up Take?
Fellow Pilots,
There's good news regarding last week's post about organized action, wherein we urged Pixonic to make a public statement about abuse of the Descend ability in Inquisitor, Mercury, and Spectre. Lo and behold:
Before it was released, I was speculating about the mechanism of the "hot" fix. It could have been a simple timer that starts at the beginning of the jump and ends a finite number of seconds later, or the countdown could begin as soon as the robot stops its descent, whether on the ground or an obstacle. Pixonic obviously went with the latter. My hope, though, was that any time a robot went into stealth, we would be able to start counting and anticipate the end of the ability - regardless of how the landing happened.
We didn't get the best stealth mechanics, but we did get the desired outcome from Pixonic. The moral: organizing efforts work, if you don't rush them!
Saving Time
Another thing that can't be rushed - upgrade times. They. Are. Insane. They can be improved a little bit, however ... and those little bits add up. Reddit moderator Bob Dylan/WalleyeHS wrote about a couple commercial watching scenarios, and I'm not sure the readers got the point, because of all the mixed-up comments. The U also recommends watching commercials because it's a revenue source for Pixonic other than big-spending players. THIS IS A GOOD THING.
Think of a 24 hour day as 72 20-minute blocks, because this is the increment in which you gain upgrade time. Thus, watching 7 commercials reduces upgrade time by ~10%. In a year, this would save you over 36 days. Because Pixonic currently provides five commercials per day, you need only play two battles and watch the adverts to take 10% off.
So I started thinking long term. Playing nine battles a day/watching 14 commercials ... 20% less time on upgrades. Playing sixteen battles and watching 21 commercials means saving seven hours of each 24! Admittedly, this is a lot of War Robots! You can use a second device to watch commercials while you play (thank Professor Evil Knievel for that tip) and rock Beacon Rush mode to expedite matters!
In summary, if you watch all the available commercials:
In case you are wondering how long these suggestions take in real time, remember: battles don't last ten minutes. We've never collected data on mean battle duration but we know that ten minutes is the absolute maximum - not the actual time elapsed. A better estimate for Domination mode would be in the 7-8 minute range, with Beacon Rush generally ending faster and Death Match taking f*&^ing forever.
Recession Economy, part 2
I've decided, generally, to stop acquiring new items because of the extreme upgrade prices/times. Looking in the dustbin, I'm storing three robots and forty weapons with levels below 12. Everything except Mender, Weyland, Falcon and Glory are "old economy" and level 10 or better. Want to guess how long it would take me to get the whole cache to 12? How about 677 days - approaching two years! I'm not including any MK2 conversions in the total, either. Ouch.
My goal is to raise everything in my hangar* to level 12 in a year without spending any real money. The year has 365 days, so I'm trying to accelerate 312 additional upgrade days. As described above, I can get ~72 days from watching commercials, leaving ~240 days I need to "catch up" somehow. Upgrades can be obtained instantly for gold, and I'm estimating it will take ~72K in gold to complete the remaining 240 days (I'll spare you the math). I'll only earn ~25K Au with daily tasks, so that could be a logjam, and who knows how many billions in silver this project will take. Ouch again. If you are leveling new economy stuff, hats off to you. I have no idea how you are doing it.
*There are some totally obsolete things in my hangar, like Golem, Carnage, Galahad, Magnums, and a Butch. But all that stuff is level 12. I've never leveled up my four Shocktrains (god help you, ARAB VIP, when I do) or my Pins and Tulumbas (Sorry Lottie-Rose!).
Progress Report on the U
You know what else can't be rushed? Clan building. I'm proud of the U, which took a REALLY long time to develop. The idea for a scientific/experimental/educational group came in the fall of 2017, we built with lots of fits and starts for over a year. We opened our own Discord server and a clan for Diamond/Expert pilots at the end of this summer. Finally, we merged with another Aurora black sheep, Excelsis, bringing in a dozen and a half great players. Sometimes, we lose:
We see other clans that are going through transformations, and they beat us some times:
But, we've been putting research into practice. When we run into the same people doing the same things over and over, we surprise them:
Super epic pro doesn't lose all that much, and (s)he is playing with the resources to max a pair of suppression bots instantly. It's just an estimate, but I think that's about 700M silver/32K gold -or- a LOT of real money.
Gotcha again ... two of Super epic's four losses in the past 50 come at the hands of the U!
If you don't already know it, "NEXT/GAME OVER" is a new iteration of the whale clan we all love to hate, "Noobz." I'm happy when I see them, because my harpoon is getting sharper every day.
Have a great Tuesday, and a week of hunting the whales ...
Doc Yat and the team at the U
Faculty Notes
There's good news regarding last week's post about organized action, wherein we urged Pixonic to make a public statement about abuse of the Descend ability in Inquisitor, Mercury, and Spectre. Lo and behold:
Before it was released, I was speculating about the mechanism of the "hot" fix. It could have been a simple timer that starts at the beginning of the jump and ends a finite number of seconds later, or the countdown could begin as soon as the robot stops its descent, whether on the ground or an obstacle. Pixonic obviously went with the latter. My hope, though, was that any time a robot went into stealth, we would be able to start counting and anticipate the end of the ability - regardless of how the landing happened.
We didn't get the best stealth mechanics, but we did get the desired outcome from Pixonic. The moral: organizing efforts work, if you don't rush them!
Saving Time
Another thing that can't be rushed - upgrade times. They. Are. Insane. They can be improved a little bit, however ... and those little bits add up. Reddit moderator Bob Dylan/WalleyeHS wrote about a couple commercial watching scenarios, and I'm not sure the readers got the point, because of all the mixed-up comments. The U also recommends watching commercials because it's a revenue source for Pixonic other than big-spending players. THIS IS A GOOD THING.
Think of a 24 hour day as 72 20-minute blocks, because this is the increment in which you gain upgrade time. Thus, watching 7 commercials reduces upgrade time by ~10%. In a year, this would save you over 36 days. Because Pixonic currently provides five commercials per day, you need only play two battles and watch the adverts to take 10% off.
So I started thinking long term. Playing nine battles a day/watching 14 commercials ... 20% less time on upgrades. Playing sixteen battles and watching 21 commercials means saving seven hours of each 24! Admittedly, this is a lot of War Robots! You can use a second device to watch commercials while you play (thank Professor Evil Knievel for that tip) and rock Beacon Rush mode to expedite matters!
In summary, if you watch all the available commercials:
- Play 2 = cut time 10% (140 minutes)
- Play 9 = cut time 20% (280 minutes)
- Play 16 = cut time 30% (420 minutes)
In case you are wondering how long these suggestions take in real time, remember: battles don't last ten minutes. We've never collected data on mean battle duration but we know that ten minutes is the absolute maximum - not the actual time elapsed. A better estimate for Domination mode would be in the 7-8 minute range, with Beacon Rush generally ending faster and Death Match taking f*&^ing forever.
Recession Economy, part 2
I've decided, generally, to stop acquiring new items because of the extreme upgrade prices/times. Looking in the dustbin, I'm storing three robots and forty weapons with levels below 12. Everything except Mender, Weyland, Falcon and Glory are "old economy" and level 10 or better. Want to guess how long it would take me to get the whole cache to 12? How about 677 days - approaching two years! I'm not including any MK2 conversions in the total, either. Ouch.
My goal is to raise everything in my hangar* to level 12 in a year without spending any real money. The year has 365 days, so I'm trying to accelerate 312 additional upgrade days. As described above, I can get ~72 days from watching commercials, leaving ~240 days I need to "catch up" somehow. Upgrades can be obtained instantly for gold, and I'm estimating it will take ~72K in gold to complete the remaining 240 days (I'll spare you the math). I'll only earn ~25K Au with daily tasks, so that could be a logjam, and who knows how many billions in silver this project will take. Ouch again. If you are leveling new economy stuff, hats off to you. I have no idea how you are doing it.
*There are some totally obsolete things in my hangar, like Golem, Carnage, Galahad, Magnums, and a Butch. But all that stuff is level 12. I've never leveled up my four Shocktrains (god help you, ARAB VIP, when I do) or my Pins and Tulumbas (Sorry Lottie-Rose!).
Progress Report on the U
You know what else can't be rushed? Clan building. I'm proud of the U, which took a REALLY long time to develop. The idea for a scientific/experimental/educational group came in the fall of 2017, we built with lots of fits and starts for over a year. We opened our own Discord server and a clan for Diamond/Expert pilots at the end of this summer. Finally, we merged with another Aurora black sheep, Excelsis, bringing in a dozen and a half great players. Sometimes, we lose:
We see other clans that are going through transformations, and they beat us some times:
But, we've been putting research into practice. When we run into the same people doing the same things over and over, we surprise them:
Super epic pro doesn't lose all that much, and (s)he is playing with the resources to max a pair of suppression bots instantly. It's just an estimate, but I think that's about 700M silver/32K gold -or- a LOT of real money.
Gotcha again ... two of Super epic's four losses in the past 50 come at the hands of the U!
If you don't already know it, "NEXT/GAME OVER" is a new iteration of the whale clan we all love to hate, "Noobz." I'm happy when I see them, because my harpoon is getting sharper every day.
Have a great Tuesday, and a week of hunting the whales ...
Doc Yat and the team at the U
Faculty Notes
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The U is not just a blog ... we are also iOS clans #48669, #141459, and #139479. We are always looking for champion-league pilots, and welcome skilled communicators from around the world.
The U is not just a blog ... we are also iOS clans #48669, #141459, and #139479. We are always looking for champion-league pilots, and welcome skilled communicators from around the world.
Go us! We actually got something accomplished. I have stopped actively playing War Robots because of the robot and weapon imbalances, along with the tankers and P2W players killing me every other game. I also lack the time as my school life is starting to heat up as the year progresses. This doesn't mean that I am done reading about strategies and ways to improve my game play, it just means I won't get to try them out as much. I hope to someday play on a regular basis, but for now I am done.
ReplyDeleteMission accomplished and not a moment too soon! Certain clans here in Amazon had started to use the bug as one of their main strategies in game and was causing a lot of bitterness and anger in our server (not a fan of either), but now that it's fixed things have started to calm down.
ReplyDeleteLove to see those screenshots of big whales biting the dust! Never can have enough of those, that's for sure.