Gameplay Strategies - How to become a top ranked player and win Redmin!!

Galaxy Control (FX Games for Android, iOS, Facebook) is an online multiplayer real time strategy game for both offensive and defensive minded players.
If your principal goal is to be a top fighter in one of the top 5 squads and potentially win the big bucks every two weeks, this guide is for you.In order to climb the worldwide leaderboard of squads and players there are certain strategies and styles of play that allow one to rapidly build an empire and climb the ranks of players worldwide.

Some people are more of the city building "sim city/farmville" gamer who like to log on casually a couple times a day and build an impenetrable base and constantly level up their towers and walls. You can win "fame points" both by attacking other people's bases or by logging off and waiting for other players to try and wipe out your base. If the attacker fails to destroy over 50% of the enemy base or fails to destroy the command center, the defender wins and the attacker loses fame points and does not collect resources. Similarly, if the attacker wipes out over 50% of the base or destroys at least the enemy command center then all resources collected will be stolen by the attacker and the defender will lose fame points and the attacker will rise in the fame rankings.

Most players go for an even balance of a well defended base and a good offense. The only way to gain resources to build your base and upgrade your combat troops is to fight other players and loot uranium, minerals, and ore to build units, buildings, and upgrades. (you can also buy resources from the in game store but you should really avoid doing this unless you love wasting money)

In this section I will talk about focusing on being an all offense attacker - you may sacrifice or postpone building high level base defenses or walls but instead focus on being able to build the largest army of fully upgraded attack troops. This strategy works great for people who are online a fair amount of time each day and are able to continuously attack enemies, loot resources, rebuild troops, and repeat. I recommend still building some decent level 2-3 walls, the minimum level of all defense towers that are available and a few carefully placed mines.

75 Next you want to build factories for building an army and spaceports to increase the size of your army you can summon into battle. Focus all resources gained to upgrade them to max level as soon as possible. Some upgrades of buildings or the ability to add another building of a certain type may require upgrade of the command center first. You can build a total of 5 factories and 5 spaceports. Max level of the factory is level 10 and will let you build any attack unit in the game and max level for spaceport is level 8 which will allow a factory to build a combination of units up to a total population size of 24. The size and complexity of the unit helps determine the population space taken in the spaceport. For example, individual soldier troops like hawks, marines or C4 roach wall bombs take up 1 pop space and massive attack robots and planes like the SS8 or Imperator take 12 and 10 pop space respectively. The number of individual units allowed on the battle field (regardless of population size of unit) increases as you upgrade your command center. At max level 10 command center you are allowed a total of 75 online units at once. Choosing an army combining many of the different unit types is the key to success by sending a well balanced and cost effective army into battle. If you build only the biggest units in the game you will be heavy on firepower but will only be able to have a small number of units fighting at once. For instance, at pop space 12, you can build two ss8 thunders per factory for a total of ten from all 5 spaceports. Similarly, you will only be able to build 10 Imperator flying battle ships at once but since they are only pop space 10, you will have four extra space in each factory to build other units.

Your ability to win in battle is directly related to the quality and quantity of military units you have it at your disposal in battle. In addition to having the max number of fully upgraded factories and spaceports, very soon you will want to be upgrading your troops in the engineering bay. The two most important units to level up first are the Vulcan and the Raptor. Hawks are great to and are very cheap but getting them to max level can wait until after you fully upgrade the vulcan and the raptor. Except for the very beginning of the game, marines are pretty much useless so do not bother upgrading them or making them a part of your army. Marines die very quickly, have no ranged attack, and do very little damage. Some squads in galaxy control will even kick you out of their alliance if you donate a marine to another squad member. Also ignore the Hornet flying unit and the Wasp resource collector. Hornets are far too weak and die almost instantly and Wasps are not needed for resource looting. Remember, you do not get any resources form your raid on an enemy base unless you destroy over 50% of the base or the CC so sending in a robot to steal a few resources may not do you any good unless you wipe the base.

In order to get the maximum amount of fame points (40 points is max per battle and 0 is minimum) galaxy control takes several factors into account to determine the fame scores for each player as a result of a battle. Higher scores (closer to 40) are awarded to the player facing the biggest challenge and lower scores (0 or negative points) will be awarded to a player fighting an easy battle or one that the game AI determines is an easier fight. While you cannot chose who attacks you while offline and on defense, carefully selecting targets while attacking will allow you to steadily increase your fame points.You are always given the opportunity to skip a target when scanning for enemy bases to raid so make sure you are confident you will win otherwise you could lose big fame points on a failed attack. You will start to get better and better at glancing at an enemy bases walls and towers to make a judgement on whether or not you will be able to win a battle. Your goal should be to completely wipe the enemy base out 100% to get the maximum available fame points. If you squeak through with a narrow 51% victory you will probably only gain 1 or 2 fame points, will not recover all of the enemy bases resources and you are dangerously close to getting 48% and losing fame and taking home no resources.

As you build up your armies to higher and higher levels you should steadily be increasing in fame points. You will lose some fame points when you are done playing and log off the game for awhile, but as soon as you become idle and your base is destroyed, you will be under a protective shield for 12 hours and no one will be able to attack yet. It may be tempting to log back on and go on the offensive and get revenge for the person who robbed you off resources and fame points, but your best bet now is to take advantage of the 12 hour shield and build upgrades to your factories and defensive structures. Then plan to go on an attack run in 12 hours or so when your shield runs out. While you are online and actively attacking, enemies cannot attack you either until you become idle. My best strategy for rapidly gaining fame points and reaching the ranks of top ranked players is to make sure that each time you play you try and gain 40 or more points until you are attacked and knocked back into shield. Since the max points you can lose is 40 points before going back onto shield, try and gain as many fame points as possible before you have to log off or go idle and get attacked. If you fight 4 battles and gain 80 fame points, you still are up +40 if you lose the max amount of points and your base is totally wiped out. Hopefully it will be a tough defensive battle and you will lose 8, but you have to expect to lose up to 40.

A GOOD, CHEAP, QUICK, DIRTY ARMY - BALANCE AND AFFORDABILITY
In order to be an effective attacker there are many considerations to take into account when choosing your army. It may seem like the best plan to only build the largest and most powerful offensive units such as the Imperator or the SS8. Unfortunately the cost and time to rebuild units like the SS8 and Imperator means you will be waiting all day to attack as the units take forever to build (20 min for imp and 45 min for SS8) and you will also very rarely loot enough resources in a battle to be able to rebuild the units lost in the fight. Powerful units like the SS8 are best used sparingly in a support role rather than as the sole unit in your army. Vulcans are the best all around unit in terms of uranium cost to build (2000), time to build (2 min), durability in total hit points and armor, and programmed to immediately seek out enemy defense towers and ignore all other structures. Raptors are the next best all around unit as their rockets are very powerful and their movement speed is good as well. The only down side of the raptor is that they are killed relatively easily despite their awesome firepower. Like Vulcans, Raptors are best used in large groups of 8 or more units, and they complement vulcans in battle very well as the vulcans will draw enemy fire away from the Raptors as the vulcans charge the strongest base defenses. This will allow the Raps to attack the other base structures unmolested such as command center or resource storage. These two units are best balance of attack and defense, affordability and relatively quick build times. The rap takes about 8 minutes so is a little slow, but worth the wait. To round out your army it is great to have 5-10 C4 roaches to blow up walls so your troops can get in, 10 or so hawks to pick off structures on the outskirts of the base, and one SS8 Thunder and one Imperator give you flexibility and firepower as the battle wages on.

The most important reason to use a balanced army is that you will have the most success in increasing your fame score and looting resources if you are able to quickly and cheaply rebuild your army and be ready to fight again. Many people I see online play with an army of 10 Imperators or 10 SS8 Thunders. The cost to build is well over 200,000 uranium and an hour build time for a fleet of 10 imps and over 500,000 uranium and close to two hours build time for 10 SS8's. With a careful mix of hawks (360 ura) Vulcans, Raptors and C4 Roach ( all around 2000 ura), you can have a massive army with 50 -60 units building in 10-20 minutes and costing 50,000-100,000 max depending on unit rations.

An inexpensive and quick-to rebuild army will allow you to stay online longer and gain more points and resources before being attacked and getting knocked into shield again.

DO NOT LET YOURSELF RUN OUT OF GAS!! WATCH YOUR URANIUM LEVELS!!
Always keep an eye on your uranium level and NEVER let it drop below 200,000 (this number may be less earlier in the game). When you start getting below 500,000, prioritize targets that provide the maximum amount of uranium and ignore fame points as a factor in selecting battles until you have a good stockpile of uranium again. The most common lament that takes people out of competition that I hear from fellow players is "I'm out of uranium completely, I can't even re-build my army". Unless you have daddy's credit card and you are able to spend 20$ every time your army gets wiped out, plan ahead and learn to manage your uranium levels. Most people alternate between going on "resource runs" and "chasing fame" and focus on collecting one at a time, and then switch. A few days before the end of squad competition, many players will spend a couple days focusing only on resources until their collectors are full, and then focus on fame only after that.

Many players believe it is necessary to massively "Drop fame points" in order to find easier battles with more favorable resource hauls to stock up again.

***While I certainly agree that at certain point ranges (1600-1900 fame pts) and at certain game levels (player level 60-70) there are definitely fewer easy resource battles -- sacrificing fame points and dropping 500-1000 pts is no guarantee that farming resources will suddenly become any easier***

D''ropping fame to try and massively restock on resources is not necessary and in my opinion is generally not a good idea. Dropping 400-500 points for example from 2200 to 1600 to restock on uranium could leave you stuck down there for another week or two and take you out of contention if in the last days of a squad competition.''

PLAN AHEAD - THE BEST SOLUTION
I also recommend upgrading your uranium reactors to max level 11 ASAP as one of your highest priorities in addition to fully upgrading your attack capability and army size. With 7 level 11 uranium reactors cranking around the clock, if you do have bad luck with battles and run out of uranium -- at least when you wake up the next day there will be about 200,000 waiting for you when you wake up. (TIP: even if you are on shield and not planning on playing the game much for the next few days or so, you should still try and log in briefly once or twice a day and collect the uranium, minerals, and ore by tapping the resource icons on top of your collectors. The generators/collectors only have minimal temporary storage for a day or two worth of resources and when full you will waste any excess generated. 

CAREFUL PLACEMENT OF UNITS AND TIMING UNIT DEPLOYMENT
Keep in mind that even though the units you are deploying on the battlefield seem like mindless drones that frequently wander off in unintended directions, each unit type has a specific behavior, favorite target and behaves by preset rules. Where and when you place each unit type is the most important part of a successful battle. Haphazardly dumping all of your units in one spot at the same time in front of an enemy base is an easy way to have most of your army wiped out before they even fire a shot. Players design their bases with walls, choke points, mines, and other hazards to quickly take out a large number of units carelessly unloaded. The mine sweeper command ship weapon is a very useful tool to neutralize mines in front of your desired entry point.

You will undoubtedly discover your own tricks and strategies on how you like to deploy your army but there are general best practices on unit launch order == vulcans first to draw enemy fire, then C4 to blow up walls, then send in raptors  then start trickling in remaining units like SS8, Imperator and hawks. Although many people use Imperator as full on offense unitsi in fleets of 10 or 11, they are relaltively weak defensively and die very quickly to anti aircraft, laser towers, gattling towers, or ground troops and surface to air mines. I like to send one or two imps towards the end of the battle once the anti aircraft towers are destroyed and I need a powerful unit to quickly mop up the remaining base structures.