The Art of War

The Art of War
The Art of War, or crashing lots of 1's and 0's into other 1's and 0's and hoping that the other person loses more 1's and 0's than you, is fairly complicated- there are waaaaay too many situations and tactics to count. Lemme start out with some of the basics-

1. ANY FLEET CAN BE PICKED APART FOR PROFIT. Assuming, of course, that there are no Command Centers (referred to as CCs from now on). A discussion of CCs and fleets will be added later, when I'm not so lazy.

2. Your fleet, no matter how large, can be destroyed. And most likely will be, more than once. So don't get cocky, k? k.

3. There are certain units you just don't attack with. Unless, of course, you want massive lulz and feel like taking someone out with a fleet of Outpost Ships or Ion Frigates. If you do this, you are awesome.


Alright, so now that I've gone over the basics, let me actually start talking about fighting. I'm going to go over some of the basic units that make up a good fleet.

The first unit you need to familiarize yourself with is the Fighter, or FT for short. If AE could be substituted for a social life (btw, AE will control your life. There's no way around it. Just go ahead and submit to it. It's actually not that bad.), this (these?) would be your girlfriend. Why? Because you do EVERYTHING with FT. Attacking, defending, support-everything. From fighter drops to level enemy meat to meatshields to protect your valuable units, to more fighter drops to destroy enemy recyclers, to clouds of fighters sitting over your base to protect your trades and whatnot, fighters are seen in every aspect of AE. That said, BUILD THEM. Tens, hundreds, thousands of thousands of fighters. In wartime, you will use them faster than theone0 loses Death Stars. I'm not kidding. They completely destroy everything from other Fighters up through Frigates, Ion Frigates, and they can even hit Cruisers, though at this point they lose a considerable amount of effectiveness. More on this later, when we actually get to battling.

The next unit, and the focus of your attack fleet, is the Cruiser, or CR. CR are your friend. With a power that breaks through everything from Cruisers to Dreadnoughts to every kind of planetary defense (including rings and shields), Cruisers are, without a doubt, one of the best units in AE. The second best unit, bested only by fighters. This is the unit that makes and breaks attack fleets, so you need a lot of them. Skillful use of this unit decides who wins wars. The fleets of the larger players have anywhere from 30000 CR to 100000 CR, to give you and idea. Yeah. In case you haven't noticed, they're kind of important.

The big brother to the Cruiser is the Heavy Cruiser. Twice as powerful and 2.5 times as expensive as the Cruiser, the Heavy Cruiser is one of those units that can be a real nightmare when used correctly. Though generally not as effective as Cruisers when it comes to taking down bases, one cannot immediately dismiss the Heavy Cruiser in favor of the Cruiser. With the ability to hit everything from other Heavy Cruisers up through the mighty Leviathan, the Heavy Cruiser sees more general use on the battlefield than the Cruiser. Heavy Cruisers also have a nasty surprise for those who leave too many fighters on their bases, have too may fighters in their fleets, or who leave recyclers out unattended. The Heavy Cruiser is the first unit to have a shielding that almost completely protects it from Fighters and Recyclers, which makes it lethal to these valuable units when they left alone...

The final important aspect of a great attack fleet is the Recycler. Always have MASSIVE amounts of recyclers. Recyclers are the key to every victory, becuase once u have smashed ur fleet into the other guy's fleet, u have derbs to clean up. Derbs are the only way u can get profit becuase it lets u make money from the other guy's fleet, so the more derbs u clean, the more profit. Having more recyclers lets u clean derbs faster, which esnures u get ALL of the derbs, rather than someone else taking them.