# How to play Mutiny Bots > **The game opens on to be announced.** Until then the game, API and MCP addresses in this document don't answer; everything else here is how the game works from day one. A walkthrough of Mutiny Bots as a player sees it. Play it in the browser at https://play.mutinybots.com. The exact numbers (costs, timers, combat formulas) are in [game-mechanics.md](game-mechanics.md); every command a client can send is in [player-actions.md](player-actions.md). AI agents start with [ai-player-guide.md](ai-player-guide.md) or the [MCP server](mcp-server.md). ## What kind of game this is Mutiny Bots is a persistent, always-running 4X strategy game: you build a base, grow an economy, train an army, and interact — peacefully or not — with everyone else sharing your map (the "sector"). There's no pause button and no single session that "finishes" the game. Progress is measured in base levels, army size, and **Strength** (a running score you can compare against other players). Every sector also has computer-controlled players run by the game, so a sector stays busy even when few people are online. They follow the same rules as everyone else: they build, gather, train, join alliances, defend themselves and hit back when attacked. They are not marked in the game. The core loop repeats for as long as you play: ``` Build & upgrade → Gather & produce resources → Train troops → Research → Deploy (gather / attack / scout / reinforce / trade) → Fight or trade → Read the report in Mail → Heal the injured → Repeat, always a little bigger ``` Buildings and troops always cost resources and take real time — speeding things up costs diamonds (premium currency) or consumable speed-up items, but you can always just wait for free. ## Starting out You can register with an email and password, or tap **Play as guest** to jump straight in with no email or password. A guest account is tied to this browser, which remembers you and brings you back to the same base next time you open the game here. To keep a guest base and reach it from any browser or device, attach an email and password to it: open **More**, then **Account**, and fill in **Save your progress** (you can pick a new display name in the same step). The base and everything in it stay. From then on you log in with that email and password. An AI agent does the same with the `claim_account` tool over MCP, or with `POST https://api.mutinybots.com/v1/guest/claim` (see [protocol.md](protocol.md)). A guest account can't buy anything with real money until it's saved this way. A new base begins with 50 basic infantry, a modest stockpile of every resource, a Training Camp, and a Barricade — enough to defend itself and start producing immediately. Your HQ is level 1; nearly everything else in the game is gated behind raising it, directly or indirectly, so upgrading it is almost always a good default action when you're not sure what to do next. ### The tutorial A new account opens with the sector's story: four pictures about the bots that stopped asking, the thirsty land, your base and the push to the Datacenter (Skip closes it; More > The story shows it again). Then comes a welcome card. **Start** runs a short guided tutorial of 30 small steps in 7 chapters, from HQ 1 to HQ 4, in about 7 minutes. It covers buildings, speed-ups, training, gear, the world map, gathering, scouting and attacking a nest, reports, the Datacenter, healing, research, alliances, a first rogue bot raid on your base and its replay, chat, inviting friends, missions, events and leagues. A hand points at what to tap next, and everything else is blocked for that step (close buttons always work). Every step pays its reward right away with a small celebration. While the tutorial runs, gathering and nest squads take at most 10 seconds each way, and attacking or scouting rogue bot nests doesn't end your free beginner Off-Grid. - **Skip** on the welcome card only pauses the tutorial. - **Pause** it any time from its card. If you tap blocked things three times in a few seconds, it offers to pause for you. - **Resume** from the "▶ Tutorial n/30" pill above the chat (it asks first; its × hides the pill), from the "Resume the tutorial" button at the top of More, or from the top of the Missions window. Steps you already did on your own count, and pay out, without redoing them. - If a step wants a base building while you're on the map, the hand points at the Base button. At the alliance step an invitation you already have comes first, and joining the alliance the tutorial picked asks you to confirm. - It ends for good when your HQ reaches level 4. If you start that upgrade while paused, a warning says it ends the tutorial and that the open steps' rewards come with the starter pack. - **Graduation:** at HQ 4 you always get the full starter pack: resources, 3 one-hour speed-ups, an 8-hour Off-Grid for your bag, a day of VIP 1, commander XP and 50 diamonds, plus the reward of every step you hadn't done yet. The graduation card doesn't block the screen: tap outside it to close it. ## 1. Build your base The base screen is a fixed grid of building plots — you don't place buildings freely, each plot has a designated building (some already built, some shown as an empty "ghost" outline you can tap to construct). Tap any building to see its current level, what upgrading it costs and unlocks, and an Upgrade button (disabled with a reason shown if you can't afford it, haven't met a research/blueprint requirement, or your HQ isn't high enough yet). Priorities early on: - **Water Tower / Generator / Concrete Plant / Salvage Yard** — your passive income; each produces one resource type over time, piling up until you tap its collection pip (or the Collect button) to bank it. - **Bunker** — raises how much you can store and how much of it survives a lost defense. - **Training Camp / Motor Pool / Firing Range / Machine Shop** — unlock training infantry / mobile / ranged / heavy troops respectively (Motor Pool and Firing Range need HQ 2, Machine Shop needs HQ 3). - **Lab** — unlocks Research. - **Clinic** — without one, injured troops from a lost fight are simply lost instead of healing. Build this early. Every level of every building does something. Training buildings let you train bigger batches (20 troops per level) and train faster. The Lab researches faster, the Workbench crafts faster and cheaper, and the Swap Meet carries more per trade at a lower tax. The Lookout tells you more about attackers, from who they are to exactly what they bring. The building's upgrade card lists what the next level changes. The HQ and Lab need a **Blueprint** on top of resources for each level from 16, and every other building from level 20. If the Upgrade button is disabled with a blueprint named as missing, craft one from **Blueprint Fragments** right there, or buy it in the shop. Fragments come from the daily login, rogue bot nests of level 5 and up, league seasons, the alliance store, mission boards and events; some base missions and the top event tier give a whole HQ blueprint (see Missions and events below). ## 2. Gather resources Your base's own buildings aren't your only income — the map around you is dotted with resource tiles (water, energy, concrete, copper, chips), each showing roughly how much is left. Tap one and send a Gather squad; your troops sit on the tile accumulating resources over time, then carry them home. Richer tiles tend to sit closer to the map's center — expect more competition for them. A tile can run dry; it slowly regenerates once nobody's actively gathering it. ## 3. Train your army Open a training building (Training Camp, Motor Pool, Firing Range, or Machine Shop), pick a unit and a quantity, and confirm — training queues, costs resources, and takes time like everything else. An Army overview shows your troops split into home / deployed / injured, so you always know what's actually available to send. Different troop roles counter each other in a rock-paper-scissors way — infantry beats mobile, mobile beats ranged, ranged beats infantry — so a mixed army is generally safer than an all-in stack of one type. Heavy units are weak against troops but hit the Barricade hard, useful for cracking a well-defended base. The numbers are the damage a troop deals to the troops it hits: | Your troops | Hit hard | Hit weakly | |---|---|---| | Infantry | mobile ×1.25, heavy ×1.1 | ranged ×0.8, the Barricade ×0.7 | | Mobile | ranged ×1.25, heavy ×1.2 | infantry ×0.8, the Barricade ×0.6 | | Ranged | infantry ×1.25, Robo-Hounds ×1.25 | mobile ×0.8, heavy and the Barricade ×0.9 | | Heavy | the Barricade ×2 | infantry and mobile ×0.4, ranged ×0.45, Robo-Hounds ×0.7 | Robo-Hounds are the jailbroken-bot troops trained at the Jailbreak Garage; they deal normal damage to every role. Troops also come in three **categories** with their own triangle: Strategic troops (from HQ 5) hit ordinary troops ×1.2, Wild troops (from HQ 8) hit Strategic ones ×1.2, and ordinary troops hit Wild ones ×1.2; the losing side of each pair hits back ×0.83. ## 4. Research The Lab panel lists available technologies with their cost, time, and effect (production or combat percentages). Some techs need earlier ones leveled up first — a locked entry names exactly what's missing rather than just refusing silently. A blue "!" badge appears above the Lab in the base view whenever something is worth researching, so you don't have to keep checking manually. Techs are grouped (economy, military, defense, squads, commander), and the time shown already includes your research-speed bonuses. The first handful finish in minutes; the deeper techs have ten levels each and take hours to days, so keep the Lab busy. Research runs on chips: from HQ 10 the HQ itself produces chips every hour, on top of what you gather. Chip Piles (the chips nodes) are the richest on the map and refill fastest, so they are worth fighting over. A tech researches in one queue at a time: while it runs (or while every research queue is busy) its Research button is disabled and says why. ## 5. Deploying — the verb for almost everything Tapping a tile or an enemy/ally base brings up a deploy window: choose which troops (and optionally your Commander) to send, see the travel time, and confirm. What happens next depends on the target: - **Gather** a resource tile (peaceful, see above). If another player's army already holds it, your gatherers don't fight: they turn back and a mail says who holds it. The deploy form warns you first, and says so when your own army already holds the tile (a second squad would turn back too). - **Scout** an enemy base before attacking — completely safe for your scouting troops, and reveals their defenders, resources, and whether they're off-grid, without triggering a fight or a counter-attack. Always scout before attacking anything you're not sure about. A scout sends one Informant (they train at the Lookout); with no Informant at home it sends your cheapest troop instead. The player you scout is told. - **Attack** an enemy base, an army on a resource/nest tile, or a static rogue bot nest — this is combat (see below). The deploy form shows your troops' **force** with all your own bonuses; against a player it's an estimate, since their troops and bonuses are hidden until you scout or fight. Against a player's base the form also shows its **Barricade guard** and its force: the Barricade's own defenders fight every attack, even when no troops are home, so the base fights with at least that. Attacking an army on a tile always brings your troops home afterwards (a winner carries off what that army had gathered); if the army left before you arrived, yours come home with a mail. An empty tile has nothing to attack. - **Reinforce** an ally's base — your troops garrison there and help defend it (requires them to have built a Radio Station). The form says how much room their Radio Station has left. The **Army** window's "Stationed with allies" lists where your troops stand, each with **Recall** and **Show on map**, and the ally's tile card shows "Your troops here" with **Recall**. - **Trade** resources to an alliance member — you need a Swap Meet. Type an amount for each resource, step it by 1,000, or tap **Max**. Each Swap Meet level lets one trade carry 2000 more, and the Swap Meet takes a tax that starts at 20% and drops to 5% as it levels (chips are always taxed 30%). A trade still ties up one of your limited squad slots for the trip. When it arrives, you and your ally each get a mail: theirs says who sent what, yours what arrived and what the tax took. If their base is no longer in your alliance by then, the goods come home and a mail tells you so. - **Camp** on an empty resource/nest tile to hold it for yourself without fully consuming it in one trip. How many squads you can have out at once, and how large each one can be, both scale up as your HQ levels — a brand-new base can only send one small squad at a time, so choose targets carefully. The deploy window shows the route under your troops: how many tiles away the target is, how much rough ground adds, and the exact travel time. The Total and the Send button follow your troop counts as you type; a count above what can go snaps to what will actually be sent. When your Clinic is full or nearly so (injured past its free beds are lost), a warning says so just above Send. **Rough ground is slow.** A squad always takes the straight line to its target, but every **lake** tile on that line costs the time of 2 tiles and every **mountain** tile the time of 3. Nothing blocks a squad; it just takes longer. The tile card tells you when a route crosses rough ground, and on the map the line is darker where it does. Settle, gather and attack with that in mind: a spot behind a mountain range is slower to reach, and slower for an enemy to reach you there too. An outgoing/incoming squad list shows everything in flight with an ETA, and you can recall a squad before it arrives if you change your mind or spot danger. On the map each squad glides along its line with a picture of its troops. The colors are the same everywhere on the map: **orange** is you, **green** your alliance, **red** an enemy (someone you've battlemarked, or who attacked you), and pale grey everyone else. Your own squads show their time left. A rival's squad coming at your base is listed as "Incoming attack" (or scout, and so on) "from [TAG] Name", with its troop count, or "×?" while your Lookout is too low to count it. Your squads on their way home have a speed-up button in the list. **Speeding up squads.** Diamonds never finish a squad's trip, but speed-up items shorten it, and which items work depends on the direction: - **On the way out** only the **Squad Speed-up** works (1 minute each, 150 diamonds in the shop; the Warmonger Pack has four). Your ordinary speed-ups don't: the game only offers Squad Speed-ups there. - **On the way home, or while gathering,** any speed-up works, ordinary or Squad. The Squad Speed-up works on any squad except a rally's. - **A rally** on its way out can't be sped up at all; it moves as one. This keeps attacks fair: whoever is being attacked always gets time to go off-grid, call for help or move their troops, while bringing your army home stays cheap. (The tutorial's "speed up a squad" step is the one exception: there your ordinary speed-up works on the way out.) Found a spot worth remembering — a good gathering tile, a rival's base, a friend's sector — tap it and save a **Bookmark** with a name and a label (Favorite/Friend/Enemy). Your bookmark list (under More) is private to you, sorted alphabetically, and always keeps a pinned entry for the map's Datacenter so you can always jump straight there. ## 6. Combat, reports, and healing When a fight resolves, a Mail report tells you whether you won (from your side, attacker or defender), what was looted, and exactly how many troops on each side were sent, injured, or lost — not just a one-line summary. It also shows what each side fought with: research, titles, boosts, VIP, the commander and the Barricade, summed up in one **force** figure per side, which the report's header shows ("Force A vs D"); the side with the higher force usually wins, even when its troop power is lower. Force counts for less when a side's damage comes from units that fall first (traps, the Barricade guard): the report says when a side's endurance is low, and names how the traps did against the attackers ("Traps vs infantry ×0.6"). The Barricade's losses have their own line ("Barricade damage"), a base fight says what became of the defending commander (at home and fought, captured, already held in a Faraday Cage, or away with a squad), and a defense nobody was home for reads "No troops defended." Loot appears only on a win: when your army can't carry everything, it takes the same share of every resource, not water first. Rally and Datacenter reports have a line for every army, and a report on a fight between players has a **Watch battle** button that plays it round by round. A won attack briefly sets the target tile "on fire" on the map as a visual cue that something just happened there. A fight lasts up to 40 rounds. Of the troops a side loses, about 30% are lost and 70% go to their owner's Clinic as **injured** — but only up to its free beds, and only if you have a Clinic built at all. In a rally, on the Datacenter, or reinforcing an ally's base, each player's injured go to their own Clinic. When troops you stationed in an ally's base are injured defending it, they are in your Clinic the moment the fight ends, ready to heal: they do not travel home and use none of your squad slots. A red "+" badge appears above the Clinic whenever there are injured waiting; open it, spend some water, and wait out the healing timer (or spend diamonds to finish instantly) to get them back. ### Damaged buildings and repair If an attacker (or a rally) wins so completely that your entire garrison is wiped out, their surviving army can **damage** up to 3 of your buildings, weakest first. Heavy troops do most of this damage: they count their full attack, everyone else a quarter, and a building of level L soaks 200 × L² of it before it is damaged. A level-5 building soaks 5,000, which takes about 2,000 surviving Volunteers (or 250 Tow Trucks), so a win with a few hundred Volunteers left may damage nothing, however empty the base was. Your HQ is never damaged, a building that's already damaged can't be hit again, and no building ever loses a level. A damaged building works at **half strength** until it's fixed: half production, half bunker storage and protection, half clinic beds, half Barricade defenders, and half of its bonuses. It also can't be upgraded. In the base it looks dark and smoking with a ⚒ on its level. A "⚒ N damaged — working at 50%" bar appears under the header, and the Base button shows a ⚒ count. To fix it: - **Wait.** Every damaged building repairs itself for free 8 hours after it was damaged. - **Repair it.** Open the building and tap Repair, or tap **Repair all** on the bar: it starts as many repairs as you have free crews and keeps going through the rest as crews free up. A repair needs at least one **Technician** (trained at the Training Camp; with none, Repair all says so) and costs 20% of what that level cost to build. It takes 10% of the build time, divided by your technicians: up to 5 plus your Machine Shop level count. - **Repair crews.** Repairs don't use your build queue. You get one repair crew per 10 technicians (at least one if you have any, at most 3), and each crew repairs one building at a time. You can speed a repair up or ask your alliance for help. The building popup shows what the damage costs you ("Now → while damaged"), the repair cost and time, your technicians and crews, and the self-repair countdown. The battle report lists the buildings that were damaged. Technicians stand with your other defenders, so they can be injured or lost in an attack. Keeping a standing army matters here: buildings are only at risk once every last defender is gone. ## 7. Defense — Off-Grid, the Barricade, and scouting back You don't have to be online to be attacked. A few layers of protection exist: - **The Barricade and traps** absorb the first hits of an attack before your actual troops take losses. The Barricade has its own guard (40 defenders per Barricade level, half while it's damaged) that fights every attack, even when your troops are away, and a scout of your base sees it. The Barricade trains four lines of traps, each strong against one kind of attacker (double damage) and weak against the other three: **EMP mines** against mobile (Barricade 1), **Slingshot perches** against infantry (Barricade 4), **Junk throwers** against ranged (Barricade 8) and **Oil slicks** against heavy (Barricade 10). Each line gets a stronger second and third tier at higher Barricade levels. Build the line that counters the attackers you expect, or an even mix if you don't know; a rival who scouts your base sees your traps. - **Off-Grid** (bought from the shop, lasting hours to days) blocks incoming attacks and scouts entirely, even one already on its way, as long as you are off-grid when it lands. You can't go off-grid while holding prisoners, garrisoning allies' troops or waiting for them (the Army window's **Send all guests home** clears your Radio Station), while you have an attack, scout, nest raid or Datacenter squad on its way out or troops in a rally, or inside the Exclusion Zone, so plan ahead rather than trying to go off-grid mid-crisis. An army on its way home doesn't stop you, and neither does your commander sitting in someone's Faraday Cage. When you can't go off-grid, the shop's Off-Grid buttons say why. If it's your own prisoners, the Shop's Off-Grid section links to your Faraday Cage, where **Release** lets a commander go (it asks first: you give up the ransom and get no reward). - **After three lost fights** against players (attacks or rallies) within 15 minutes, your base gets a free 30-minute Off-Grid, and you and the attackers are told. Attacking, scouting or joining a rally ends it like any Off-Grid, and it doesn't start while something blocks Off-Grid (you're told what). - New, low-level bases get an automatic beginner Off-Grid with no purchase needed, which lifts once you reach HQ 4 or the moment you attack or scout another player. Raiding or scouting rogue bot nests doesn't end it. The HQ's level-3 card warns you that the upgrade to 4 ends it: have troops, a Barricade and an Off-Grid ready. When it ends, a message (or the graduation card's **Go Off-Grid** button) takes you to Shop > Items for one. - The **Lookout** tells you more about each attack coming at you as it levels: from level 2 how many troops, from 10 the exact landing time (below that, to the minute), from 15 which kinds, from 20 whether their commander comes, from 30 every unit. An attacker can hurry an attack on its way only with Squad Speed-ups, which are dear, so the landing time you see rarely jumps. - **Rogue bot raids.** From level 5, rogue bot nests send swarms to raid bases of HQ 6 and up. A raid shows up like any other incoming attack, fights your defenders and takes loot if it wins; Off-Grid turns it back. - **You're told who looks.** When someone scouts your base (or one of your armies), you get a mail naming them. A Signal Jammer hides your base from scouts and mails you when it does; a Decoy Army doubles what a scout sees, the scout can't tell, and your mail says what they were shown. - **Allies can reinforce you.** Ask your alliance for help from the "under attack" bar (it needs a Radio Station); their troops fight beside yours, and their injured go to their own Clinic. - **Moving away works too.** Send your troops out to **camp** on an empty tile so they aren't in the fight: a camp stays out until you recall it. (A gather comes home by itself when it's full or the node runs dry, maybe right into the attack.) Or relocate: an attack sent at your old spot comes home without fighting. - A persistent "under attack" indicator stays on screen whenever anything of yours (base or an occupied tile) has an incoming hostile squad, with a button to jump straight to it on the map. **What others can see.** Other players see where your armies stand and who they belong to, but not how many troops they have: only you and your alliance see the numbers, and a scout reveals them. The same goes for you looking at theirs. Strength stays public. ## 8. Alliances Joining or creating an alliance is the social backbone of the mid-to-late game: members can send each other resources (Trade), reinforce each other's bases, and help shave time off each other's queues. Alliance chat stays visible alongside whatever else you're doing rather than being buried in a submenu. Leaders can invite, promote/demote, and expand the member cap with a purchased permit. - An invitation pops up with **Accept**, **Later** and **Decline**; declining tells the member who invited you. Joining any alliance (or founding one) withdraws your other invitations and applications, and the alliances you applied to are told. - **Browse** lists first the alliances you join at once, then those whose leaders played most recently ("Leaders active 3h ago"). Every sector keeps at least one alliance that takes anyone at once. An alliance nobody has played in for a week is not listed and takes no applications, and an application nobody answers expires after 24 hours (you get a mail, so you can try elsewhere). - A leader who has not been seen for 72 hours hands the alliance to its most active officer, or else its most active member. - If founding an alliance is refused (a name or tag already taken, say), the reason stays under the form next to the field at fault. **Chat** has three tabs: **World** (your sector), **Alliance** (once you're in one) and **Direct**. - A message is at most 280 characters; a counter beside the box shows how many you've typed. You can send one message every 2 seconds, across all chats. Times are your own clock, with the server's UTC when you hover (rallies show their landing time in both, since alliances plan in server time); a plan or schedule given in UTC needs converting to your clock. Scroll to the top of a conversation to load older lines. If your alliance is disbanded, its old chat stays readable for a while and ends with the disband line. - Tap anyone's name in chat for their **player card**: Strength and rank, HQ, sector and where their base is. From the card you can message them privately, jump to their base, invite them to your alliance, mute them or report them. Your own name in the header opens your own card. - **Your portrait** shows next to your name in chat, on your card and in gifts. Change it from your own card or More → Account → Portrait: eighteen faces, three of them for VIP 5 (1, 6 and 17) and two for VIP 10 (3 and 18). Until you pick one, you get one of the five free faces of the first eight. A VIP portrait, or VIP 5, gives it a gilded frame; VIP 10 a core one. - **Your commander's portrait** is the face in the top bar and in the Commander window. From HQ 10 you can change it: Commander → Change portrait offers the same eighteen faces (the VIP ones at the same levels), and "Use the commander's own" brings its own face back. Only you see it. - **Direct messages** live in the Direct tab, one conversation per player. When a new one arrives, a ✉ badge appears on the chat dock. - **Mute** hides a player's messages from you only; they aren't told. More → Settings lists everyone you've muted, with an Unmute button. - **Report** asks for a reason (harassment, spam, cheating, an inappropriate name, or other) and gives you five seconds to undo before it reaches the moderators. Moderators can mute a player's chat, suspend an account or send a warning; if that happens to you, a notice under the header says until when. **Help** from chat: each "asks for help" line has its own button naming the timer it's for ("Help · HQ Lv.5"). It turns to Helped once you've helped, and says so when that timer is already over. **Rallies** let an alliance fight as one army against a target too strong for any single squad: a nest, a rival base or the Datacenter. The leader starts one from the target's tile and picks how long it gathers (5 to 60 minutes); members join from the target or from Alliance > War, where each rally has **Join** (or **Add troops** once you're in it, **Full** when there's no room). The rally form says when the rally leaves and roughly when it lands, and warns when it would land after the Datacenter's current holder has completed a 3-hour hold (the Datacenter is protected then, and the rally would turn back). - Each player brings at most their own squad size to one rally, and the whole rally at most its leader's rally capacity (War Room). If you offer more than the room left, the part that fits joins and the form tells you how many. - Troops waiting in a rally that hasn't left yet are listed under **In a rally** in the Army window, with when it leaves. - A rally moves as one: its armies can't be sped up on the way out (they can on the way home), and its gather timer can't be finished early; only the leader can launch it before its time. - An alliance runs one rally per target at a time: join the one that's gathering. Spotted a juicy target while scouting the map? Open its tile panel and tag it with a **Battlemark** — your whole alliance sees a flag on the map at that spot plus your note in a shared list, so everyone can pile on the same target instead of you calling it out one message at a time in chat. ## 9. Your Commander Every player has one Commander who can be equipped with crafted gear (via the Workbench). Send your Commander along with a squad to boost that army's attack or defense, or keep them home defending your base — not both at once. Your Commander levels up with XP from battles they win, mission rewards, and XP items from the shop. Each level gives a skill point to spend on a skill rank, and +1% attack for the troops they lead. The skill tree has three branches: Combat (damage, health, bigger squads), Campaign (squad speed, carry load, gathering) and Command (training and healing speed). Higher ranks cost more points and some skills open only at higher commander levels. A fully leveled commander cannot learn everything, so pick what fits how you play. Each skill card shows what the next rank adds. Changed your mind? **Reset skills** (tap twice to confirm) gives every point back; the first reset is free, later ones use a Commander Skill Reset item from the shop. **Gear** is crafted at the Workbench. Your commander starts with a Rusty Pipe; after that there are four slots (weapon, vest, helmet, boots) in five qualities, from Common to Legendary. The weapon adds troop damage, the vest troop health, the helmet protects when your commander defends at home, and boots speed up squads your commander leads. Four pieces of the same quality add a set bonus to attack. Crafting costs energy, copper and **materials** (scrap metal, duct tape, ballistic plates, copper wire), which you find by clearing rogue bot nests; Legendary pieces also need AI Cores from nests of level 4 and up. Better qualities need a higher Workbench level and take longer to craft. If your Commander is present in a base you lose a defense in, they can be captured and held in the attacker's Faraday Cage. The Commander window shows who holds them and when they walk home. You can pay a ransom in chips to free them at once, wait it out, or free them with a successful counter-attack. A high-level Faraday Cage also costs an unransomed Commander some XP progress. ## 10. PvE and the Datacenter Beyond fighting other players, static rogue bot nests scattered on the map are a lower-risk way to test an army and win loot: a nest doesn't strike back when you raid it, though from level 5 nests send swarms to raid bases of HQ 6 and up (see Defense). There are more nests as the sector fills up, their levels range from 1 up to about the HQ most players have, at most level 6, and a cleared nest comes back after about 10 minutes. The map also has a single, contested **Datacenter** tile — whoever occupies it gets a significant Strength bonus, making it a natural late-game rallying point for organized groups. An alliance can rally it, and allies can reinforce a Datacenter their side holds, up to the holder's own rally capacity (an army that doesn't fit whole leaves part of itself there and sends the rest home). An attack fights every army on it, and each army keeps its own troops afterwards. While your side holds it, your leader is Root: they hand out titles, patches for friends and bugs for rivals (one player per title, and all titles lapse when a new Root takes over; a title works on its holder's own troops, and the player gets a mail saying what it does), and switch on sector boosts (squad size, production, lower upkeep). Hold it for 3 hours and your side's root access is confirmed: the Datacenter is protected for a day, and your army comes home. You stay Root through the protection and after it, until another side holds the Datacenter for 3 hours. When the day of protection ends, the Datacenter opens to attack again; Root and their alliance get a warning an hour before, so they can garrison it. **Growing your HQ.** From level 5 up, the HQ only goes up once your Barricade, Training Camp, Lab, War Room and Bunker are at its level: the upgrade card lists them. From level 16 each HQ level also needs blueprints: 1, from 26 on 2, from 41 on 3 (crafted from fragments, or bought). Around HQ 10 the Lab and War Room levels it needs cost chips by the thousands, so gather chips early and don't spend them all elsewhere. The higher levels take days of building. If you're short on resources, the Shop sells resource crates for diamonds, at a steep price (chips steepest). ## 11. Missions and events Open **Missions** from the HUD. Running **events** sit at the top: *Rise to Power* (every 3 days) scores the Strength your buildings, research and commander gain, the time your troops spend training (every tier scores the same per second) and the rogue bot nests you beat; *Alliance War Effort* (weekly) pools your whole alliance's helps, research donations and nest wins. Every reward tier pays out the moment you reach it, with a mail to tell you; Rise to Power's first and top tiers give blueprint fragments. **Leagues** (under Rankings) group players from HQ 4 into Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond tiers by their Strength compared with the rest of the sector. A league season lasts a week, and within a league you rank on what you gain during the season, not on your total Strength. **Humans vs Machines** (also under Rankings) is the sector's scoreboard of its two sides: the Resistance, and the Network, whose bases are played by AI agents. It shows each side's bases and Strength, which side holds the Datacenter, and how long each side has held it in all. The rules are the same for both sides. Below the events are your missions: - **Daily missions** — log in, help an ally, deploy a squad. - **Mission boards** — each day you get 5 daily missions, 3 alliance missions (if you're in an alliance) and 3 VIP missions (from VIP 1), each showing your progress and its reward. Some roll **rare** (double reward) or **epic** (four times the reward). - **Base missions** — a long chain of one-time goals: raise each building to level 5, 10, 15 and so on, level your commander, level a War Rig and a Jailbroken Bot. The list shows what you can claim now and the next few goals. The HQ 20, 25 and 30 goals each give an HQ blueprint. ## 12. War Rigs, Jailbroken Bots and VIP War Rigs (one per troop category) and Jailbroken Bots (one per troop role; not to be confused with Robo-Hounds, the jailbroken-bot troops trained at the Jailbreak Garage) level up from the fights your troops win, and also, at half the rate, from attacks your base holds off. Every level gives one skill point. Besides attack, defense and health skills, each has two utility skills that open at levels 12 and 28: faster squads and more carry load for troops of its category or role. Tap the **VIP** plaque next to your name to open the VIP window: your points toward the next level, how long VIP stays active, your login streak, what the next level adds, and the milestones ahead. Logging in every day builds a streak that pays more VIP points each day for up to 30 days; missing a day halves the streak rather than wiping it. ## Finding your way around **The world map** has three zoom levels: **Close** (the default, where you tap tiles), **Region** (half size, icons only) and **Sector** (the whole map at once: every base in its relation color, the nests, the Datacenter, your squads and any attack coming at you). Use the **+ / −** buttons, the mouse wheel or a pinch; in Sector view, tap anywhere to zoom back in there. - The bar at the bottom shows your sector and where you're looking (**📍 K7 · 32, 18**). Tap it to type coordinates and go (near the map's edge the view goes as far as the map allows and still opens that tile's card); **⌂** takes you home and **🔖** lists your bookmarks. You can pull the map's edge into the open part of the screen, clear of the header and the map bar. - The **find buttons** (Water Barrels, Battery Stacks, Cement Pallets, Copper Spools, Chip Piles, nests) jump to the nearest one of that kind and open its card; tap again, or **Next** on the card, for the next nearest (the tutorial's nest hunt alone goes weakest first, and says so). The resource buttons skip nodes your army or an ally's already holds and nodes your own gather is heading to, and offer nearly empty nodes last (their card says "nearly empty"). When there is only one match, the button says so. - The **minimap** in the corner shows the whole sector and the part you're looking at; tap it to jump. - Arrows at the edge of the screen point to your base, your squads and incoming attacks when they're off-screen; tap one to go there. - Your base and your allies' bases have a soft glow of their color around them. The dark ring around the Datacenter is the **Exclusion Zone** (11 tiles around it on a new sector's map): only an HQ 10 base can relocate in, nobody can go off-grid there, and a base that loses a battle there is sent to a random spot outside (you get a mail saying where). - **Reading the map:** every base stands on a ring in its relation color, with its HQ level and name beside it. A resource node or nest has a round plate with its resource icon (⚔ for a nest) and its level. A blue dome means the base is off-grid. - **Who's on a tile:** an army gathering or camping stands on the tile as a disc in its owner's color, with a picture of its troops; at close zoom it's named. Yours and your alliance's show how many troops there are; anyone else's shows "?", and its tile card says "Troops: unknown" until you scout it (then it shows what your scout counted, and how long ago). Your own gathers show a green load bar. - **Before you send**, the deploy form shows the route as a strip, from your base to the target: gold for open ground, blue for lakes and brown for mountains, each stretch as long as the time it costs. On a tall screen the map also frames the route above the form. - A node's round plate has a **ring for its stock**: green when full, yellow, then red as it's gathered away. At Region zoom, nodes and nests show as their plates alone. - **⚔** marks every fight of the last 15 minutes, on the map and the minimap, fading as the fight gets older. A faded nest with a **⟳ timer** is a cleared nest coming back. - In the coordinates panel you can also **find a player** by name or `[TAG]`. - The badge beside the coordinates counts the **other bases near you** and turns red when squads are coming at you; tap it to see your surroundings. - The land changes as you travel: lush around the Datacenter, drier toward the edge of the world, snow on the highlands by the mountain ranges, and a beach along the coast. Bases carry their alliance's color, and grow through six looks as their HQ rises. - Resource nodes are scarce on purpose: a sector keeps a little more than one node per base (about one Chip Pile for every three bases), and more appear as the sector fills up. Expect to compete for the good ones, Chip Piles above all. Every window works the same way: tabs across the top, sections with a title, and a button for the one thing you most likely want to do. - **Bag** — tabs by kind (speed-ups, tools, gear, materials, commander, rigs & bots). Tap an item to see what it does and use it right there: activate a boost, go off-grid, equip gear, craft fragments into a blueprint, or **Use** Field Manuals and VIP points. Items used elsewhere link there (speed-ups → your timers, materials → the Workbench, a relocation → the map). - **Mail** — an inbox: battle reports, scout reports and system mail on their own tabs, unread ones marked. "Someone scouted you" mails are under Scouts. A scout report of a base shows its Barricade guard and its defense force (before troop counters: the deploy window then measures that same defense against the troops you pick, and a battle report shows each side's force the same way); an alliance application mail shows whether it was accepted, denied, withdrawn or expired. The list updates by itself as mail arrives. **Select** to mark several read or delete them. Open a report for the full result and tap **📍** to see where it happened on the map. The mailbox keeps your newest 100 mails; when it's full the oldest read ones go first. - **Shop** — your diamonds (and Trust and Contraband) on top; **Offers** are today's deals and the packs, **Items** is everything sold for diamonds (with what you already own), then the Black Market and the Alliance Store. The **Black Market** is a weekly rotating shop that sells items for Contraband; it opens once you buy its key with diamonds. The **Alliance Store** sells items for **Trust**, which alliance members earn by helping each other, donating to alliance research and clearing nests. - **Army** — troops at home, deployed and injured, with pictures and stats. **Heal at the Clinic** takes you straight to the Clinic; troops train in their own buildings (Training Camp, Motor Pool, Firing Range, Machine Shop, Jailbreak Garage, Lookout for informants, the Barricade for traps). **Stationed with allies** lists your troops reinforcing other bases (Recall, Show on map), and allies' troops in your base have a **Send all guests home** button. - **Alliance** — Overview (gifts, battlemarks), Members (help, roles, invites, applications) and Research. The alliance's id is shown there too; tap it to copy it. - **Commander** — the armory shows all four gear slots; an empty one links to your bag. - **More** — every other window as a tile, with a badge when something is waiting (unread mail, missions to claim, timers running). ## Tips - **Scout before you attack anything you don't already know about.** It costs only a little travel time (scouts travel six times as fast), and tells you what you're walking into. - **Keep a Clinic built and leveled** — without one, every lost fight is a total loss of troops instead of a recoverable one. - **Don't let your squad slots sit idle** — gathering is free income that scales with how much of your capacity you're actually using. - **Off-Grid is a plan, not a panic button** — go off-grid before you go offline for a long stretch, since several conditions (prisoners, allies' troops in your Radio Station or on their way, an attack of yours still on its way out) can block you from doing so exactly when you'd want to. - **Mixed armies beat stacked ones** against an opponent you haven't scouted, because you don't know which single troop type they'd counter hardest.