Research Notes

One of the best aspects of Warzone2100 is the the tech tree. It is huge and takes several hours to research the whole tree. The key to success in the game especially against human players is to get to the parts of the tree that give a competitive advantage. The question is, which are those parts.

Form here on it just becomes opinion, each person develops their own strategy.

I see about 8 main streams for weapons in the game:

Machine Gun, Missile, Cannon, Gauss Cannon, Ranged Guns, Laser, Flamer and Bombs.

To save time I never develop down the flamer path. These weapons have no range making them easy to defeat. I skip bombs as I tend not to use VTOLs because by the time they are effective weapons you can have victory by other methods.

I skip most of the cannon and consequently gauss cannon line because it takes quite a long time to get to the effective weapon stage.

This trims down the list nicely to machine guns, missiles and ranged guns. Machines guns are the mainstay of my defence until I can develop the Lancer missile. I estimate that each research step that improves damage does so by about 30% cumulatively and machine guns can be upgraded 3 times this way. They can also have their rate of fire improved 3 times giving them about double the rate of fire they start with. With these upgrades, a grouping of machine gun emplacements can effectively deal with a very large attack of vehicles up to medium bodies. A warning though, if you don't have something else in place when the bad guys show up with heavy bodies then you are in trouble.

Which leads on to missiles. The missile path starts with Minipod rockets then Lancer missiles then Tank Killers then Scourge missiles. There is a ranged missile path but it is generally outclassed by ranged cannon weapons except for the Arch Angel missile which has enormous range but which takes a very long time to develop. I tend to research Minipods to the bare minimum needed to get Lancers and stick to Lancer research after that. Minipods do similar damage to machine guns and their fire rate is a fraction of a machine gun. Lancers can have their damage upgraded 6 times and their refire rate twice. This allows them keep up with the toughening armor on heavy bodies as the game progresses. You will still need a good number of them to take out the toughest bodies that appear late in the game. After the 6 Lancer damage upgrades are completed the Tank Killer becomes a research option. I never build Tank killer emplacements as they cost twice as much as a Lancer and there are no damage improving research options. The Scourge with damage improvements outdoes the tank killer anyway, is more effective against structures and has nearly twice the range. By the time you get to Scourge missiles you should have well established defences , Scourge missile towers can be used to supplement them.

Ranged guns, specifically Hellstorms and Groundshakers are the backbone of my ranged attack. If you can beat you enemy to developing Hellstorms and install a reasonable number within range of their base along with a counter battery tower then it can be impossible for them to get any ranged weapons installed at all. Their battery gets destroyed before it fires two shots and you get to install more and more. A counter to Hellstorms is to build Groundshakers just out of the Hellstorms range. The counter counter is to build some slower fireing Groundshakers for cover from this. The ultimate escalation is Arch Angel missiles which have over 3 times the range of Hellstorms but only a fraction of the refire rate. If you and your opponent reach Hellstorms at a similar time then it can become a war of attrition. Who ever spends the most usually wins. It is ideal not to get into this kind of longer ranged counter battery war so that you only have to research and build one type of ranged weapon, then build lots of them.

Other Useful Research Items

When researching, never stop researching improvements in researching. This will allow all other research to occur faster and this can get you ahead of your opponent.

Crete upgrades improve the strength of all your emplacements. Just two quick upgrades can make a large difference. If you are not sure what to research next then a crete upgrade is a safe bet.

Power upgrades are also a good choice. Usually, if you can out spend your opponent you can win.

It may be tempting to put a lot of research effort into bodies. Those supper heavy bodies sure look tough but there isn't a body that cant be wiped out fairly easily.