[NukeZone] - The unofficial Manual Pages.

"The hidden chapters of the NukeZone Manual"

A. Technical Game Details
    1. What can the units really attack, and why?
    2. Why does some units seem to be stronger than they really are?
    3. The damage-based points system
    4. How is the networth calculated?
    5. The art of surviving
    6. How units act in defense

B. How to play (according to us)
    1. So, how do we gather points?
    2. Recommended unit-combos.
    3. How to act if you become primary target.
    4. The Bank

B. About the manual
    1. Who wrote this manual, and why?
    2. If you still need help...
    3. Changelog

A2. Why does some units seem to be stronger than they really are?
You might have noticed, that for example, if you have 300 cruisers, and someone attacks you with 100 submarines - you loose! You pick up your calculator and realize that the cruisers does (85*300) 22k5 damage, and the submarines (140*100) 14k damage. You just say "WTF?!" and figure you would own them badly. Well, that is not the case.

Since the Cruisers can attack Sea Units, Air Units & Buildings, the attackpower is divided between all thoose units (85/3) ~ 28 per unit-type (regardless of if your opponent has all three types, the damage is still 28 on each unit-type). Knowing this, we calculate it again

Submarines against sea (140/1) * 100 = 14k
Cruisers against sea (85/3) * 300 = 8k4

Oops! There is the answer! 100 subs outrule the cruisers so bad, since they only attack sea, and therefore, all their attacking power can hit sea units.

Other examples:

Heavy Artillery
Can attack: Buildings
Attack/Life: 85/25
True meaning: Does 85 damage to buildings.

Heavy Tank
Can attack: Vehicles, Buildings
Attack/Life: 65/60
True meaning: Does 32.5 damage to Vehicles, and 32.5 damage to Buildings

A3. The damage-based points system
The new damage-based points system works as follows, it's based on percentual damage, and here's the values:

1p 0.0% - 1.0%
2p 1.0% - 3.0%
3p 3.0% - 6.0%
4p 6.0% - 10%
5p 10%+

The points are rounded off, for example, both 2.95% and 3.05% makes "3.0%", but 2.95% makes 2p and 3.05% makes 3p.
When you're in a mutual war, you get twice the points (i.e. they double)

A4. How is the networth calculated?
The networth formulas are really simple. They're based on the price of the units in almost all cases.

Any Unit	PRICE / 10
Defense Buildings	PRICE / 10
Non-Defensive Buildings	PRICE / 20
Missiles	PRICE / 20
Satellites	PRICE / 20
Walls (*)	$10.000
Land	$1,05 / m2
Sciences	$10 / science

(*) The walls give $10.000 additional NW for every upgrade, notice that it starts with the "Barbed Wire" wich you always have.

A5. The art of surviving.
So you want to live forever? Let's see what we can do.

First of all, at a low NW, defense buildings are USELESS, example:

Torpedo Launcher
Costs: $1200
Life: 135
Gives networth: (1200/10) = 120

Research Lab
Costs: $2500
Life: 300
Gives networth: (2500/20) = 125

OH! Can you see what I see? The Research lab and the Torpedo Launcher actually give you pretty much the same networth! But, the Research Lab has 300 in life, and the Torpedo Launcher has only 135 in life! My god, what a difference! You can survive more than two times as many attacks using the Research Lab instead of the Torpedo Launcher! Now you might think "Hey! My defense?!". Well, defense aren't really needed at low NW if you and your clan are active, and if you really want defense, go get some GOOD defense, like a unit-combo (f.ex Subs/Cruisers/Destroyers, protects against everything, and they do attack too, defense buildings doesn't). At a higher NW ($500.000 and up), it might be good to add one kind of defense-buildings where you are weak. Using more than one kind of defense-buildings won't do you any good at all.

A6. How units act in defense
You surely read section A1 about what units can attack. Maybe this makes you wonder how 1000 Heavy Tanks can be chanceless against 1000 Heavy tanks in defense?

As stated in section A2, the damage of the units are splitted between the unit-types a unit can attack. This is also true in defense, BUT, when you are defending, the damage to buildings doesn't count! Example:

Heavy Tank attacking:
Can attack: Buildings, Vehicles
Attack/Life: 65/60
True meaning: Does 32,5 damage to vehicles, and 32,5 damage to buildings.

Heavy Tank defending:
Can attack: Buildings
Attack/Life: 65/60
True meaning: Does 65 damage to vehicles.

Wow! No wonder they defend so good! Here's another example:

Rocket Soldier attacking:
Can attack: Buildings, Vehicles, Air Units
Attack/Life: 15/10
True meaning: Does 5 damage to buildings, 5 damage to vehicles, and 5 damage to air units.

Rocket Soldier defending:
Can attack: Vehicles, Air Units
Attack/Life: 15/10
True meaning: Does 7,5 damage to vehicles, and 7,5 damage to air units.

This way of calculating apply to all units that can attack buildings and units. Thoose who can only attack units, or buildings, are not affected.

B1. So, how do we gather points?
Do you want to gather much points? Well, check this out..

Last round, you could attack with just about anything, getting a victory would give you 10p at all times. Now this is fucked up badly. I assume you have been reading the other sections of this document, adding two plus two, you will notice that what you will need to conquer points now are..

1) NW Damage. And according to the NW-Calculation chapter, units and defensive buildings give the most NW. Everyone has units, let's go for units.
2) According to chapter 2, about damage, you do most damage to certain units by having units that only attack ONE type of units. Learn how the units work (see A1 and A2)!
3) As a thumb rule, attacking smaller guys are worth it if you get 6p or more.
4) Be careful to watch spyreports. Always spy before attacking!

Generally, take all the unit-killers (SH60 Sea-Hawk, SAM tanks, Humvee, Submarine, Flame Thrower), plus something to take out tanks, like the X-35 Joint Strike Fighter or Heavy Tanks (Even tho they attack two kinds each, it's the best tank-killers available). Divide these units up in your clan, make sure everyone uses only ONE kind of units, and then always spy your enemies, and attack guys with the units you can kill. They will get a massive unit-loss, and you can expect many points. However, these tactics require big activity, and new wars all the time, since the clans tend to run out of units. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention. This doesn't really KILL the enemies, since no unit-killers can attack buildings, but if you cared about kills, you wouldn't go for points anyway, since it's useless to attack a unit-free province, gives no points.

B3. How to act if you become primary target.
If I become the primary target of the clan we're fighting, how should I act?

If you became the primary target (against a pretty active clan) its VERY important that you don't attack. Just save your turns and sell your army and rebuild with labs and try to make the rest of the clan to give you aid! It can be a bit boring to just sit around with 250turns and do nothing. But trust me it's worth it, because if you die you will not be able to do ANYTHING AT ALL in three days. If you became the target you must be online very much and be ready. If you don't get enough aid and have pretty much turns, there is a few things you can do. 1. Try to steal wich can gice you plenty of money. 2. Train units for turns and sell them on the market should atleast give you 1-2k per turns, wich its not much but is better then to die with turns. Try to check what unit gives the best profit at the market at the moment. remember to calculate the number of turns used to build the units too. Example, you can buy 20 infanteries with one turn, but only 5 sea units. i.e. if you earn $250 on one infantry, or $1000 on a sea-unit, the turns are worth the same amount of money.

B4. The Bank.
So, what is the bank good for?

The main goal is to survive, and this is where the bank comes in. It should not be used to "earn rent" like some guys do, that doesn't really give anything, since you earn at a max 300k in five days (at 2,1% interest). 300k in five day's aren't really THAT attractive, you can steal that in like 3-6 good thiefing attempts. So, to survive you should fill the bank with ten deposits of 250k each (fills all the spots with the minimum possible value to get full bank) for five days. This way, you can use a minimal amount of money every time you need it. The only reason I can see to bank for anything other than five days, is if you play for NW and want to get a little bit higher the last day, then you should bank for 15 days near the end of the round. Anyway, here is the little "trick" wich actually can shorten your bank time with up to one day. The time until the money is being unlocked, is only counted from the current date, not the time. So, if you bank something on januari 19th, 07.30, or januari 19th, 23.59, it's still gonna be locked until januari 25:th, 00:00. This means you should try to do all your deposits close to 00.00 (Server time, CET). Why then? If you're in a fight, it might be useful to have the money laying around to aid other players. If you bank it, it will be locked.

1. Who wrote this manual, and why?
This webpage was created and gathered by the clanmembers of 'In Memory Of'. All the information on this page aren't in any way verified by the NZ crew. We have found all these things on our own, while playing in our clan (big thanks to all of you guys!). We cannot guarantee that this manual is 100% correct, since it's only based on what we have learned thru our rounds in NukeZone. Use this information in whatever way you like.

This page was created beause we feel that everyone should have access to technical information like this (the stuff in the A section). The NukeZone Quick Guides, and Manual, was however recently updated, and they are a bit more informative than they were earlier. The tactics and tips in section B are added because we felt we wanted to share our so-called "unbeatable" tactics.

The original location of this page, if you're looking at a copy, is located at http://www.sector7.nu/nz-info.html. This page will be updated when new stuff comes to our knowledge. If you feel like getting in touch with us, drop a note in the guestbook at http://www.sector7.nu, and soneone will hopefully answer.

Good luck, and have fun playing NukeZone!

2. If you still need help...
If you still need help, I urge you to check the IRC-Channel #nz_help on Quakenet. You can ask questions there, and if anyone is around, you will get help. If this isn't enough, you could always talk to the clan-leader in the clan Newbie Traning Centre, as their main goal is to train new players to get good knowledge of the game.

3. Changelog
2003-01-18: Initial release by inm
2003-01-19: Added section: Changelog
2003-01-19: Added chapter: The Bank
2003-01-22: Splitted main chapter into one technical and one about playing.
2003-01-22: Added and integrated Rederiet's material about playing (sections B1, B2 & B3).
2003-02-11: Added chapter: How units act in defense..