notes-computer-games-robotek

Strategy

First, Hexage's strategy guide is very good, read it before you read anything I wrote:

http://blog.hexage.net/2011/05/27/strategy-guide-to-robotek/

Opening

Note that although the first turn is simultaneous, the second is not, and so the first player (who gets to go first on the second turn and to potentially destroy one of the second player's bots before they can fire in the second turn) has a significant advantage.

On the first move, summon. I summon a droid, although i'm considering summoning a tank if the first player has an upgraded droid.

Summoning

Almost always Summon if you have no bots. Exceptions are:

Summon droids if your opponent doesn't have enough firepower to destroy them before your next turn, or tanks otherwise.

I don't summon Drones because if the opponent has the Repulsor or Deflector coin upgrades, they have a good chance of ignoring Drone missles.

Don't summon if you already have two bots, or if you have one very powerful bot (an elite or heroic droid, say). If you have three or more bots, the odds get too good for your opponent to hack one of them. If you have a very powerful bot then the opponent may try to Hack even if you have less than three, and you can reduce the odds that your opponent's Hack will succeed by keeping your bot number down. An exception is when one of your bots is very weak and about to die

Survival

The game is often more about survival than about getting ahead. Due to the roll of chance, if you are behind and you can hang on long enough, you might get a lucky roll or two that turns the tables.

A losing situation

When you're losing, you are in a situation where you summon new bots, and then they get eliminated before your next turn. In the worst case, your enemy has a strong firewall (shield) and has the Deflector coin upgrade.

Shields

I use shield a lot, although if your opponent has more firepower than you, and you both have shields, and you spend all your moves replenishing your shield, then they will eventually win.

Another thing to keep in mind with a shield is that the enemy's first Droid will only be able to fire at the shield.

Hack

I'm not too happy with the existence of Hack but since it's there we have to use it when doing so is optimal.

I always Hack when the enemy has 4 or more bots.

If the enemy has 3 bots, I Hack if, unless the enemy gets a lucky roll, there is no way that my mainframe will become 'naked' (no bots, no shield) before my next turn.

If the enemy has 2 bots, I Hack if at least one of them is a Heroic droid, and sometime if one of them is an Elite droid.

In any case, I Hack if my situation seems hopeless.

Energy drain

This is good in two cases:

Laser

Laser is good when

Microwave

Microwave is good when the enemy has a Droid behind a shield with 6 or less HP left.

Shock

Shock is good in two situations:

Specials

Nuke

Be aware of if your opponent is getting near nuke power. If your mainframe cannot survive a nuke, you must go all out to try to win before you opponent nukes, because you will be dead afterwards. Being able to survive a nuke is one of the few situations that Emergency Repair is useful, imo.

Rapid fire

If your opponent's droids have a lot of firepower, then a single rapid fire, if coupled with energy drain, can deal more damage than you might expect and might kill you in one turn.

Emergency Repair

Imo this is only realy useful if the enemy is about to be able to nuke you and it would make the difference between surviving or not.

Heroic droid

This can bring you back from a losing situation because instead of using your action to summon and then watching the bot(s) you summoned be eliminated before the next turn, you can use your action to put up a shield and then the Heroic droid appears behind the shield.

Coins

According to the 'survival' theory, you want to put coins into things that help you survive when you're losing, rather than things that help you clinch a win.

In this scenario, Critical hit is a little helpful but not very because your newly summoned droid still won't last until your next turn, and in the worst case scenario the enemy has a shield so on the first turn your new droid does nothing else but knock out the shield, which the enemy can just put back on their turn. Lucky strike isn't helpful because in the worst case scenario, the enemy has a firewall (shield) with Deflector, and tanks with Repulsor Armor.

My guess is that it's important to put a lot of coins into Hack (Messy Hack). This is because Hack is sometimes the only way to survive; for example if your opponent has a heroic droid and a droid under a strong shield, and you have no shield, no bots, and little HP. It's not always possible to avoid these sorts of situations; for example, perhaps you are winning and you have a heroic droid but then your enemy rolls three Hacks, Hacks your droid, rolls 3 Shields, and then uses a Laser on you, taking out your shield and your remaining bot(s). Now you are in a position where unless you get 3 in a row of something, anything you summon can be destroyed before you can do anything else. Hack is good in this situation because when it succeeds, it can directly eliminate the threat (the enemy heroic droid) in one turn, with no need to first knock out a shield and give the enemy a chance to put the shield back up. Messy Hack also has this useful property of bypassing shields.

Out of the others, the ones that you would use most often are the best. Repulsor Armor (for tanks) is especially good because when things are going poorly for you, you're going to be keeping a tank around (or end up having a tank by accident because everything else gets killed), and how much damage the tank can take (or repulse) could be the difference between you winning or losing.

Deflector is also good. It mainly helps when you are even or ahead of your opponent already, but it also helps if you are losing badly and Hacking, at which point you may happen to roll a standard or advanced Deflector.

Super boost is probably also good because you'll accidentally roll a boost when you are selecting Shield or Hack.

The attack upgrades (electron fury, laser critical, residual blast) probably don't help much when you're losing, because the enemies' bots are probably behind a shield (firewall), and you probably can't muster enough force to both knock out the shield and also kill a high-level bot in one turn (unless you get lucky and roll three matching symbols, which is unlikely enough that you'll probably be dead if you select an attack move every turn until it happens).

Misc

Generally it is better to let a bot die and then to get a new one rather than repairing it. The exceptions are if the bot is Elite or Heroic.

Shields (firewalls) at first appear to have the same dynamic. However, if the shield is not upgraded, and you choose Shield, you might get a lucky roll and upgrade it. If it is upgraded, you might want to repair it because once it's gone, if you get a new shield it probably won't be upgraded.