Auras

Ships

Auras

General Aura Strategies as upgrades progress

This section discusses how each Aura evolves as their upgrades go, how upgrading them would help you, as well as detailed strategies to use them to maximum effect.

When the stat says maxed, it means when the Aura is completely full, in other words, collecting any more particles will no longer increase the Aura size. This is only applicable for radius based Auras. A non-full Aura scales accordingly to the max stat.

The upgrades for Auras are as shown below, which each number representing the corresponding cost for the corresponding level:

1. ¢1 (Unlocked by Default) - However, you don't need to spend that ¢1, it is implicit cost when buying the ship / getting the ship free
2. ¢150
3. ¢300
4. ¢450
5. ¢750
6. (Ult) ¢1.500

Particles

There are 4 sources of energy in this game:

• Energy particles dropped by destroyed invaders
• Energy particles generated by Kappa Drive, which generates one particle ~0.367s at ult level)
• Grazing (either from a bullet or laser)
• Aura Auto Regeneration (not due to grazing)

Here's the table of how much energy is earned. Take these numbers as it is first, as we will discuss this in the context of Auras later.

*Note that Shogun has a very small boost when grazing, but the difference is difficult to determine due to how small it is.

All Auras will also regenerate up to a very small radius on their own, which has an equivalent energy count of 10, and this is not due to grazing. You will only regenerate this very small amount of Aura while touch is engaged, with the regeneration rate around ~3.33 energy per second. Thus, when charging a Zen or holding a Zen's charge complete status, this regeneration does not occur. You can see what I mean by regeneration in the video below:

With regards to particles dropped by invaders, while the data is not complete, here are the known number of particles dropped by some invaders, as well as the associated total energy from each invader whose data is known.

Finally, particles disappear from the field if they are not collected after 1 minute. This is very rare, and only occurs for gold particles from destroyed invaders.

Aura Energy

With the numbers above for the energy by different means, here are the maximum energies that can be stored for each Aura. These are the figures at ult level, the maximum energy at lower levels are slightly lower.

Bullet EMP

Upgrade Lvl	Max Radius
1	250
2	300
3	350
4	400
5	450
Ultimate (6)

Ultimate stuns turrets in its radius for a maximum of 0.6s, which is useful to reset spinners, MIRV Bloomers, and DD Weapons.

Useful Levels: All, Especially Ult

Brief Summary: The best beginner's tool of survival. Can be used offensively to some extent, but mostly defensive.

Upgrades

• Most useful Aura, even at Level 1.
• Upgrades in BEMP only increases maximum size.
• The smallest BEMPs can save you from death.
  • This is coupled with the fact that the automatic regeneration of BEMP is enough for it to be used again.
  • Since you would be usually cornered by bullets before your supposed death, the proximity with the bullets as you retreat is close enough for you to graze off them.
  • This increases BEMP radius a bit more, and being a bit more useful in clearing a small enough space to wiggle your way out of tight situations.
  • Used in small amounts, BEMP is almost able to infinitely save your life if you can dodge your way out of a bullet hell.
  • BEMP becomes more of a second chance, which you can almost infinitely abuse at times.
    • Especially, in the absence of lasers.
• Upgrading BEMP level by level does have a noticeable effect.
  • The radius of BEMP increases faster even with the same amount of particles.
  • At lower levels, BEMP is purely a defensive tool.
  • With higher levels however, BEMP becomes more than that.
  • It is also a re-positioning tool for offensive ships equipped with BEMP.
  • Indirectly, BEMP helps out in damaging invaders since you can then aim your weapon straight at the invaders instead of potentially missing and wasting DPS.

Strategies

• BEMP is a universal bullet clearing tool.
  • Doesn't have any particular weakness to any type of bullets
  • Against boomerangs, while BEMP works well to clear them out, mis-firing BEMP at the wrong time can miss a few incoming boomerangs.
  • Very effective against pellet and dart spinners since you could rapidly graze off them, resulting in Aura gains.
    • You can then hop across lanes after a very short time to avoid other bullets coming in that lane you are in.
• One weakness of BEMP is that it is a one-time usage, using it leaves you vulnerable in the next round of bullets.
  • However, destroying invaders fast enough gives you particles to refill BEMP very quickly, thus being able to launch more decently sized BEMPs.
  • Remember, even the smallest BEMPs help!
• BEMP's Ult is a game changer.
  • A 0.6s stun duration doesn't seem like much, but the duration is not what you are looking at.
  • It is the very fact it stuns in the first place that works so well.
    • Works very well to reset deadly spinners, MIRV Bloomers, lasers and DD Weapons, and delay them from firing, leaving you more space to move around with less bullets being pumped onto the field, or lasers to cut you off into a corner.
    • Buys you more time for you to destroy these dangerous turrets.
    • The huge radius also allows you to go on the offense and line yourself up with these dangerous turrets to take them out quickly.
  • The additional useful fact of BEMP is that it slows down time briefly when the Aura is expanded (the bigger Aura, the more slowed time you have, obviously), allowing you to move yourself in place.
  • The stun time can also be enough for you to charge up an offensive Zen.
  • Bear in mind that it is mostly a one time reset, so you still need to act fast to take out these turrets, unless there are enough smaller invaders around to feed your Aura. At best, you can reset twice.
  • This turns BEMP into a versatile offence and defence tool.
• Much better to use BEMP pre-emptively, instead of doing the standard retreat until you are cornered strategy.
  • This is because BEMP is a 360° Aura, and using it further back wastes the 180° behind you, clearing less bullets than optimal.
  • When you know that you are going to be cornered, use BEMP immediately.
  • When you have decided it is time to use BEMP, try your best to make a sudden jerk forward as much as you can (be careful not to crash into bullets, do however much you are comfortable with) and then fire BEMP.
    • Using it as forward as you can also allows you retreat space afterwards, which is always useful.
• Cannot deal directly deal against lasers.
  
  • For most cases, the reset only works one time since the second BEMP would usually not be big enough to cover all lasers on field.
    • This means a problem against fast tracking lasers, and there can be multiple of them scattered in different parts of the playing field.
    • The reset also works to your disadvantage for certain turrets.
      • For T1/T2 dart launchers, it can cause them to shoot randomly after they are being free of the stun, causing a mess of bullets on field.
      • Couple that with T3/T4 dart spreads that also flood the field again quickly, it can sometimes be a problem.
      • The same goes with pellet spreads, particularly when they are hit with your BEMP during their cooldown period.
      • The biggest issue comes with boomerang turrets, particularly high tier ones, since they will flood you with boomerangs immediately after being free of the stun, leaving you little time to react, especially with the combination of the other bullets previously mentioned.
• Struggles slightly against heavy waves.
  • You will need to find ways to graze off other bullets, such as darts or even pellets.
  • Against higher rank daily missions, BEMP can be difficult to sustain due to how heavy and dense waves can get.
  • As a pure defensive tool, you must quickly work to eliminate enough invaders to create enough breathing space for yourself, before you get cornered with the tiniest BEMPs which can be difficult to save you.

Stun EMP

Upgrade Lvl	Max Radius	Max Stun Time
1	450	2.0s
2		2.25s
3		2.5s
4		2.75s
5		3.0s
Ultimate (6)

Ultimate deals a maximum of 10 damage to all invaders in its range when fired, which is useful for immediately wiping out all affinities of Sparrows.

Useful Levels: 1, Ult

Brief Summary: High skill Aura, only recommended for more experienced players. Works best in dense waves.

Upgrades

• A Level 1 SEMP is generally not enough to do any useful stunning for its true intended purposes.
• However, a Level 1 SEMP works very well to reset spinners, MIRV Bloomers and lasers just like BEMP.
• Used in small quantities, SEMP can make a big difference in your survivability at level 1.
• The fact that SEMP does not increase in radius means it is quite far reaching, which is very useful for resetting multiple turrets.
• It is thus used as precision turret stopping tool.
  • If you predict a mess of bullets headed your way, stun a group of turrets to lighten the load of bullets.
• At level 1, SEMP also becomes a pseudo dodging tool, as the time slowdown from the smallest SEMP can make a difference in dodging between tight gaps of bullets.
• Once you reach higher levels, the true purpose of SEMP is realized.
  • SEMP is now a pre-emptive usage, and you should almost always use it when the wave fully arrives, rather than waiting a while to stun spinners, MIRV Bloomers and lasers.
  • SEMP now gives you near absolute freedom (with only the bullets from the previous wave being of hindrance, if any) in navigation.
  • The time slowdown effect of SEMP is also significant and lasts quite some time.
    • This allows you to carefully navigate out of the mess of bullets left behind in the previous wave and eliminate invaders.
  • During the stun time, eliminate the smaller invaders first, in order to refill your SEMP quickly.
    • Eliminate from the smallest to the biggest invaders, so Ravens, then Herons, then Eagles and so on.
    • Sparrows are of no issue as the SEMP blast would had killed them with the ult upgrade.
      • If you don't have the ult however, eliminate Sparrows before Ravens.
    • With the absolute freedom to move around, you should go behind larger invaders to destroy smaller ones.
    • When you have eliminated sufficient smaller invaders, you would have gained back a full or near full Aura to fire yet another one.
      • Keep using SEMP at full or almost full size where possible.
      • You can stop using SEMP once the size of SEMPs is less than half.
  • Using SEMP is like a tactical strategic puzzle. Figure out the solution which is the sequence of killing invaders to solve the wave
    • Learn to utilize the initial time slowdown properly to quickly figure out the solution while avoiding the bullets from the last wave.

Strategies

• Requires experience, especially knowing roughly the stun time with the corresponding radius size of SEMP.
  • Fire SEMP before the invaders are free of the stun and start firing bullets again.
  • However, you do not want to waste the previous SEMP duration as they do not stack.
    • How it works is each SEMP blast has its own countdown timer, so when only one has finished countdown, it does not matter.
    • The invaders are only free of stun after all SEMP countdowns have reached zero.
  • Allowing the invaders to be free of stun, even for just a millisecond, can spell disaster as bullets can go flying around in all directions, making navigation difficult.
• The fast refilling nature of SEMP means that killing rapidly is essential, which makes it very powerful against dense waves.
• Bear in mind that the relatively small AoE damage of SEMP means that there may not be enough time to keep heavy waves continuously stunned.
• When you are about to anticipate a heavy wave, keep the particles from the previous wave so that you have spare particles to keep the invaders of a heavy wave continually stunned.
• On the other hand, when faced with a wave with only Eagles and/or higher, then SEMP should be only used when such dangerous turrets are about to fire. If there is no such turret, feel free to use it immediately and just proceed to pop off the most dangerous turrets on field first.
• If the wave is not dense enough to sustain the continuous usage of SEMP, you run into problems post stun where bullets start flying around in all directions.
  • It becomes a tactical puzzle to quickly draw up a plan to eliminate what you can in that time period, and head back downfield to prevent bullets from flying around in all directions.
  • This, of course, applies only when there are dart tracking turrets or boomerangs.
• Because of how the smallest SEMPs will reset any turret, it is extremely useful against spinners, and even DD weapons.
  • You can even completely prevent them from firing at all.
  • Particularly, it should be used to render DDMBs pretty much useless as you stun it, allowing complete freedom to kill off invaders and turrets anywhere, especially upfield, without worry.
• However, SEMP's biggest weakness is against Caged MIRVs.
  • Their large range which destroys all or if not almost all Sparrows on screen leaves a big mess of pellets on screen.
  • With most daily missions these days, clearing out the whole screen of Sparrows equipped with Caged MIRVs is no longer such a huge threat (since the number of Sparrows is still manageable), but judge your own comfort level.
  • In early waves, using SEMP to wipe out all Sparrows will quickly call upon the next wave, which pumps in even more bullets and potentially more Caged MIRV Sparrows.
  • Here, you have to judge whether you are comfortable to keep on using SEMP to instantly clear all Caged MIRV Sparrows.
  • The good thing is, generally, you only can use SEMP every 2 waves due to the lack of particles.
  • Particles from one of the earlier waves generally don't generate enough to have a powerful enough SEMP to eliminate all Sparrows, so there is no point to use SEMP in consecutive waves anyway.
  • If you want to use SEMP on waves with Caged MIRV Sparrows, trigger it just slightly before all the Sparrows arrive so they can be immediately wiped out before they start to move around.
    • This creates a predictable pattern of pellets that is significantly easier to dodge through.
    • However, there may be exceptions of certain formations where it might help to wait a split second when the Sparrows start moving to use SEMP as the pattern pellets released are impossible to dodge through.
• You will no longer be using SEMP as a pseudo dodging tool.
  • Or at least, it is extremely rare as SEMP is not designed as a last minute resort, but a pre-emptive use Aura.
• SEMP is also an effective AoE damage tool, with its extremely huge radius you can deal huge damage in dense waves.
  • Its fast refilling nature also means continuous AoE damage in such dense waves, resulting in quicker eliminations to sustain the stun.

Barrier

Upgrade Lvl	Max Radius	Max Barrier Strength
1	250	100%
2		126%
3		150%
4		176%
5		200%
Ultimate (6)

Ultimate adds an additional Inner Lining , a smaller barrier inside of the outer barrier that has approximately a maximum of 100% strength. However, the inner lining will fade together with the outer lining if the outer lining starts fading first.

Useful Levels: 1, (sometimes 5), Ult

Brief Summary: A pre-emptive usage Aura. Only recommended after a player has mastered the basics of understanding how bullets and lasers work. Surprisingly very effective if wielded very well.

Upgrades

• Utilized with extreme precision, Barrier sometimes even triumphs over BEMP at level 1.
• The smallest barriers block off one full burst of lasers, and is also able to keep bullets off for a reasonable period of time.
• This is very useful when cutting holes in bullet walls so that you can squeeze your way through the gap made by the barrier.
  • It is not entirely reliable to cut bullet wall holes for sure, but it does help.
• Until you reach the ult level, the usage of barrier remains the same. It is basically a tool to cut off bullets to squeeze your way through.
• However, you will have more leniency in last minute barrier deployments against lasers.
• Barriers are best deployed as small as possible and around yourself.
• You can deploy upfield if you find you are in an overflow of particles.
• Stacking multiple barriers (more than 4 is quite excessive already) is generally of not much use.
  • The unfortunate thing about barriers is that their health decays over time, so a barrier not taking damage will still fade after a while.
  • This is why it is useless to deploy so many barriers as the old barriers deployed inside of newer barriers will fade without it having its usefulness.
    • You can however, attempt to deploy each subsequent barrier a little backward than the previous one, such that the front barrier is an older one and can be useful against incoming bullets from tracking turrets.

Strategies

• When you reach the ult level, gameplay changes radically.
• When you get a large amount of particles for a full size / near full size barrier, you should now deploy your barrier upfield such that it encapsulates the invaders.
  • This allows you to take advantage of the inner lining of barriers as well.
  • This is not true for all barrier ships as some ships are either too weak or have a main weapon that makes it difficult to deploy barriers upfield.
• The one important thing about barriers is the Phase Out duration of barriers.
  • No matter the size of the barrier, the Phase Out time of the barrier is almost constant.
  • Thus, the smallest barriers are very useful for this reason.
  • Deploying upfield to create practically a double barrier drastically improves survivability from the double Phase Out from both the inner and outer linings.
  • Be warned however, that the Phase Out of barriers is unreliable in protecting you from lasers leaking through the barrier, so be prepared to strafe or deploy a small barrier where you are when you see the barriers fading.
• Barriers' biggest weakness is to lasers as lasers do enormous damage to barriers.
  • Usually one full burst of about 10 lasers is enough to make a barrier start fading.
  • However, they are incredibly effective against speed lasers which do very little damage to barriers.
• The gameplay of Barrier at ult level is generally to deploy a barrier upfield when the following 2 conditions are satisfied.
  • Firstly, it must be sufficiently safe enough to go upfield to do the deployment.
  • Secondly, there must be either slightly less than enough to completely fill the Aura, or only slightly more than enough.
    • If you see that there are too many particles, strategically grab some particles, and head back downfield to dump a small barrier at the bottom of the field.
    • Try to make the outer edge of the smaller barrier not inside the bigger barrier upfield (if any).
    • When opportunity allows, head back upfield to deploy the full barrier around invaders.
    • Take note that it can take a small fraction of time for you to actually pick up the particles when dashing upfield, so the barrier size may not always be of a size you wish.
    • It is difficult to control this don't be too concerned over this, as a small upfield barrier can also make use of its inner lining.
• Always try to keep a small deployable barrier at hand where possible.
• The more important priority, however, is to make sure that you have at least one barrier deployed at the start of a wave, preferably upfield.
• If you can afford to spam more upfield barriers, do it, even if that leaves you with nearly no Aura remaining.
• When looking at survivability, it is usually possible to delay the next wave and place at least one upfield barrier.
• When speedrunning, find opportunities midwave to quickly head upfield to deploy a barrier.
  • If you need to charge a Zen that takes a long time, then it might just be better to deploy a barrier around yourself to save time going upfield.
    • It is ok to dump some barriers downfield to prevent overflow of particles.
• Generally, the maximum recommended number of big barriers upfield is 2, since there are 4 layers of barriers to plow through.
  • 2 large barriers and 1 mini one upfield is also generally ok.
• The most important about barriers is that barriers are not tools of defence where you can have your leeway in doing whatever you want downfield and be safe from invader fire.
• Depending on ship, you should deploy some offensive Zen while the barrier is up, or use the chance to start popping turrets or killing invaders.
• Barriers are designed to be destroyed, so they are merely a tool for you to buy a bit of time to destroy invaders, and not stay safe forever.
• Do not be afraid to deploy barriers around yourself, and waste the inner lining.
• Small barriers around yourself can actually work better than big barriers upfield, even without the use of the inner lining.
  • Such small barriers can still effectively aid the setup of many offensive Zens.
  • The smallest barriers can also be a slightly pre-emptive last defence against a wall of bullets approaching you. Emphasis on pre-emptiveness, as the most last minute barrier won't save you, at least from bullets (but for lasers, absolutely so).
• Generally, when deploying an upfield barrier, you want to cover all invaders so that you can safely charge an offensive Zen or do turret popping.
  • However, if there are very deadly turrets on a Vulture behind, especially MIRV Bloomers, spinners and high tier boomerang turrets, it may be beneficial to instead deploy the barrier such it only covers the dangerous turrets
  • Leave yourself exposed to invader fire below, such that the barrier(s) can block off only the more dangerous bullets and MIRVs coming from upfield.
  • Barrier positioning does matter in such circumstances.
• Despite DDLs and DDMBs completely obliterating Barriers, due to the long duration these weapons take to fire, you can continue to place barriers even in the presence of DD weapons.
  • However, be sure to keep a deployable barrier when you see these DD weapons.
  • After the DD weapon has fired, barriers can be deployed again since barriers don't last long anyway.
    • An interesting to note is that, an absurd amount of barriers can actually stop a DDL, although the amount is usually impractical.
    • This goes to prove that the Phase Out of barriers have a large but finite amount of health, which likely decays quickly over time.
    • However, no matter the amount of barriers placed, all barriers will be obliterated immediately after a DDMB goes off.
• Keep in mind that quite a number of barrier ships are unable to fully utilize the inner lining of Barrier.
  • Do take a closer look at each barrier ship before coming to a conclusion whether the ship is actually good or not.
  • Generally speaking, ships that are able to properly often utilize the inner lining are better survival ships.
• Barrier looks like a very straightforward Aura to use (it sounds like just always deploy barriers upfield), but there are many complexities to it where if well optimized, can make Barrier users very powerful in survival.
• It is hard to advise on any hard and fast rule on how to use Barrier as a lot of it is based on feel and experience.
  • For an average user however, it is usually slightly underpowered, especially in higher ranks where the bullet density is very high.
• Barrier is also effective against all kinds of bullets, particularly fast moving ones.

Laser Storm

Here's one of the little laser moons that deal the damage:

Upgrade Lvl	No of Laser Moons	Max Duration	Max Damage	Max Radius
1	3	4.5s	89	350
2			94	375
3	4		98	400
4			103	425
5	5		107	450
Ultimate (6)			112	500

Ultimate also makes Laser Moons prioritize active turrets, which means that they will target turrets that are not dead, and after they are dead, they will no longer target it. The Laser Moons will also ignore cockpits.

Useful Levels: Ult

Brief Summary: Very underpowered Aura. Main purpose is to pop turrets off. Not really recommended for anyone, even pros or beginners alike.

Upgrades

• Useless at level 1, as LS does puny DPS over a long duration of 4.5s, and targets anything it so likes, which is seldom what is desired.
• The worst thing about level 1 LS is its tiny radius, so you must keep in range of some invader in order to deal any damage at all.
  • To keep up close to the invaders with such a tiny radius is simply ridiculous.

Strategies

• No changes to how you would use LS at all levels, including ult.
• The ult basically is the one that is the main function of LS, to pop turrets off.
• Just spam LS unless it is too small
  • If it can cover some upfield invader turrets, just use it.
• The very big problem about LS is, it lasts so long, which almost always mean particles wastage since the next LS after the current one fades would very likely to be full Aura size.
  • No way to tell how much particles to collect because you can't see the Aura radius growing in size while the current LS is in use.
  • So treat LS as nothing more than a supplementary damage.
  • Manual Aura management is too difficult without any form of visual indicator.
• LS deals damage slowly. Thus, as an offensive Aura, it fails at its job to eliminate targets fast.
• LS also switches targets after firing at one for some time, which means turrets sometimes do not get popped off quickly enough unless you use your main weapon to explicitly finish off the job.
• The need to usually stay sufficiently close to the invaders, especially on waves where you are short of particles, is another big problem.
  • Especially so in heavy waves as they will more likely feature deadly turrets.
• The absence of the need to lock on any targets means it is also possible to accidentally fire LS without invaders being around.
  • Thus, never activate LS pre-emptively, but only when invaders have fully arrived.

Trivia: In a screenshot of Phoenix 2, that was on one of the dev's Twitter / X before the game was officially released which you can see here, it was apparent that Laser Storm was called Laser Satellites. However, the devs have clarified that these names that you see in the placeholder image were never used in development, so the image was just a placeholder with placeholder names.

Missile Swarm

Upgrade Lvl	Max No of Missiles	Max Damage	Max Radius	Target Tracking
1	38	114	300	Very Good
2	40	120	337
3	42	126	375
4	44	132	412
5	46	138	450
Ultimate (6)				Perfect

Ultimate enables Advanced Targeting , allows the missiles to re-target another target if the original turret or invader (that each individual missile decided at the moment MS was launched) is dead. Bear in mind it will not re-target another target that MS did not lock onto at the time MS was launched.

Useful Levels: 1-5, Ult not very important

Brief Summary: Consistent burst damage Aura. Easy to pick up, hard to master. Generally reliable. Useful even for intermediate players who have moved on from a defensive playstyle. High level optimization is possible.

Strategies

• One of the most straightforward offensive Auras to use in the game.
• Fire and Forget principle. After you launching MS, let it do its job and you continue doing whatever you need to.
  • No point to care about what MS does after you fire it.
  • The onus is on you to make sure MS targets whatever you need to target before you actually fire it.
  • This means that it is important that you try to as upfield as possible so that you cover as many targets as possible.
  • After a while, with experience from using MS, you'll roughly know how many targets are sufficient for different sizes of Aura so that you don't waste missiles.
    • This is the part that is hard to master, and can make all the difference in speedrunning.
• The ult isn't terribly important for MS, as misguided missiles that attempt to hit a target that has already been destroyed actually have a chance of simply trailing off to hit another invader, especially larger invaders.
  • The ult helps MS in primarily dense waves.
  • When there are larger invaders in front, the ult is less useful.
• It's a good idea to be on one side of the field when you fire it.
  • After firing it, quickly strafe to the other side.
  • Doing this allows you to dodge the initial oncoming fire since tracking turrets will all fire to that side.
  • MS also tends to be like an epidemic; it's damage tends to spread out from the epicenter, and slowly gets weaker as the radius spreads.
    • This means that staying on that side means your main weapon might compete for damage with MS.
    • With ult, this is less significant as the missiles can redirect themselves
    • Due to the high burst damage of MS, this can mean forward firing main weapons can have nothing left to hit since MS is a burst damage which kills whatever is on the side you fire MS on extremely fast.
  • This is the Divide and Conquer technique, where MS takes care of one side of invaders while your main weapon takes care of the other side.
• Effective against frontline dense waves.
  • However, since MS spreads from its source of release, this means more often than not, it is difficult to reach dense invader crowds upfield.
  • This can be overcomed by some MS ships that can reach upfield safely, especially with TP.
  • Even with large invaders in front, the heavy damage caused by MS is able to eliminate these large invaders quite quickly so that you can quickly destroy the invaders behind as well.
• The slight RNG factor of MS can be annoying.
  • Despite being bursty, it can sometimes be difficult to launch consecutive MS strikes, especially when the dense waves in front die out very fast, which necessitates quickly getting rid of the particles collected.
  • You can only fire the next MS after the last missile has hit its intended target, accounting for re-targeting.
    • Missiles that are lost due to all targets locked on at fire time already destroyed do not count.
  • This means that you are at the mercy of invader RNG movements, which can be annoying especially due to the curvy paths of MS, which makes some missiles circle endlessly before just disappearing and wasting that damage.
• Can struggle against dense waves.
  • MS deals single target damage instead of AoE damage
  • Taking into account the travel time of all the missiles, MS can be slow in clearing out dense waves.
    • This means a real risk of particle overflow in such dense waves.
• Obviously, conversely, excellent against heavy waves, which are usually problematic.
  • A full MS burst is usually enough to full or almost fully wipe 2 Eagles, which are significant problems due to their high health and possibly dangerous middle turrets.
• Unreliable in turret popping due to the curvy paths of missiles from MS.
  • They often hit the hull of invaders instead of the turrets.
  • The principle is to kill entire invader(s) before they even has the chance to flood the field with bullets and lasers.
  • This does become an issue with boss invaders such as Condors and Rocs, especially when MS is a one time use (or at most 3 times with 2.5 full sizes of MS).
  • Being unable to pop turrets means MS is nothing more than a damage tool which simply makes the fight slightly faster without being able to aid you in the rest of the fight with so many turrets still up and firing.
    • That being said, shortening the fight with Condors and Rocs is already a great help.
• When using MS against armored invaders, unless you have the Armor Piercing apex, against Vultures and above, for the purpose of speedrunning, try to fire MS such that it only targets the cockpit of these invaders, and as few target points on Vultures and above.
  • The most ideal case is thus, targeting the cockpit and only the 2 turrets nearest to the cockpit.
  • Doing so will try to focus as many missiles onto the cockpit as possible, thus allowing more missiles to bypass armor damage reduction..
• Experienced players can try a daring method using MS, commonly known as Missile Barreling.
  • Frequently used on Eagles and Herons, go right up to the middle of the invader, slightly offset below, and launch MS.
  • When executed perfectly, all missiles are immediately absorbed by the invader
  • This allows the next round of MS to be used immediately.
  • This technique has many benefits.
    • In a survival context, Missile Barreling allows you to be able to exterminate a threatening Heron or Eagle instantly.
    • In speedrunning, being able to launch the second MS immediately saves a lot of time.
  • An imperfect Missile Barreling will result in a small amount of missiles still swerving around, which wastes time.
  • In order to Missile Barrel an Eagle, you must positioned at the correct spot before the wave with the target Eagle arrives.
    • However, sometimes, positioning yourself too upfield causes you to overflow on particles.
    • In these scenarios, unfortunately you just have to be very precise in going from downfield to the correct spot on the Eagle to do the perfect Missile Barreling.
    • This takes a LOT of practice.
  • You would usually not require a perfect Missile Barreling for Herons, as Missile Barreling on Herons are usually only for lower Acts such as Acts 1 - 2
  • Anything higher, it is better to not waste MS by doing a missile barrel.
  • For Vultures, Missile Barreling is a lot more straightforward as you can simply go right into the cockpit and release MS.
  • While possible to use on Condors and Rocs, the use case is almost non-existent since they have a lot more health.
  • A full MS would not kill them, so there is no point to quickly unload a full burst of MS and potentially waste particles.

Trivia: Here were some early prototypes of Missile Swarm. Or maybe, you could say Missile Strike instead as the missiles were a lot more directed. The old MS also required you to hold on to the double tap just like present day PD to fire off an increasing amount of missiles.

Point Defence

Upgrade Lvl	Max Radius	No of Laser Beams	Efficiency
1	250	2	100%
2	290	4	120%
3	330	6	150%
4	370	8	200%
5	410	10	300%
Ultimate (6)

Ultimate enables MIRV Defence , which allows you to eliminate MIRVs with only one laser beam instead of 5.

Useful Levels: Approximately 4-Ult

Brief Summary: A scalpel/precision strike BEMP. Recommended for intermediate level players who can dodge reasonably well.

Upgrades

• Level 1 PD is one of the worst defensive Auras in the game as it does nearly nothing.
• It is, however, useful in breaking holes in pellet walls in order to escape the pellet lanes to make last minute defensive measures to possibly avoid being trapped.
  • However, this has to be done pre-emptively before other faster bullets such as darts and boomerangs come for you.
  • It is however, completely useless against darts and boomerangs.
  • The extreme inefficiency of PD with only 2 laser beams mean that it is ineffective against shurikens which come in great quantities.
  • To deal with shurikens, you just have to spam tap and graze to slowly cut through the shuriken clouds.
• As you upgrade PD, it becomes a lot more responsive and a lot more effective, being better able to deal with more and more types of bullets.

Strategies

• Eventually, it becomes a semi effective tool against MIRVs when it reaches the ult level.
  • However, it is no means that most effective against MIRVs due to them being the slowest bullets in the game, which means that it is very difficult to get PD to actually target them.
  • In fact, it is more often than not, more efficient to simply explode them and use PD to eliminate some of their released pellets rather than using PD to plow through the other bullets around it.
    • This should be done when you are faced with a wall of shurikens around it.
    • Or when there are too many pellet lanes around it.
• It's generally more efficient to simply trigger laser MIRVs rather than eliminate it, since they aren't too dangerous when it is not too difficult to find pockets of safe spaces around laser lanes.
  
  • However, it can be useful to eliminate laser MIRVs that could not be triggered in the mass activation of laser MIRVs.
• Think of PD more like a last minute BEMP at times.
  • It is able to save you from certain death, but it is only useful when used in small amounts.
  • Holding on to PD and therefore using it in large amounts, drains PD very fast which is not effective.
  • PD should only be used in the most dire situations.
  • It is also used when you wish to reposition yourself to jump across lanes of pellets or darts, especially in speedrunning.
  • Never hold on to PD when faced with a crowd of bullets as that will backfire later.
  • You should only do very brief taps in very desperate situations, or if you need to reposition yourself at the other side of the field, used in very short holds.
    • This is because PD should be only used to eliminate the most dangerous bullets which are in closest proximity to you.
    • When making the jump to reposition, holding it down means eliminating unnecessary bullets that are further away from you as well, which is not as useful.
    • Instead, using it in bursts allows PD to constantly re-evaluate the most dangerous bullets nearest to you more effectively, thus reducing wastage.
  • When faced with boomerangs however, unfortunately, you will need to do start using PD a little earlier (approximately 0.5s earlier or something) to clear off a bit of bullets around you
    • Even though a max level PD is quite efficient, it can be difficult for PD to target boomerangs at the very brief moment it enters PD range, leaving insufficient time for PD to target the boomerangs.
• PD should be used to move in the appropriate direction according to the wave formation.
  • For dense waves with small invaders in front, push yourself forward slowly while moving sideways very slightly to avoid head-on bullets.
  • This allows you to collect the particles from these invaders to sustain PD.
  • For heavy waves, PD should generally be used to move sideways, instead of against the direction bullets are coming from.
    • This is because going head-on, and directly against the flow will face more resistance, draining PD faster. (The same anology is that going against the flow of the river is harder than attempting to cross one.)
• For some ships, PD is used as an aggressive positioning tool to get up close to invaders.
  • In such cases, PD should be spam tapped, and still not held on to.
  • Bear in mind that when the field becomes slightly more dense in bullets, it is no longer possible to use PD for such aggressive close encounters with invaders and PD reverts back to normal usage.
  • This is especially so for speedrunning with such ships, where you must be very careful of your PD usage.
    • You can fully drain PD and then graze to gain minimum amount of PD to eliminate just enough to stay in close range, especially in bullet lanes or dart spreads.
• The good thing about PD is it refills fast.
  • The smallest PD from natural Aura regeneration can still fire off one burst of PD, which can eliminate as many bullets as it can lock onto
    • Usually up to about a maximum of 6 bullets when you desperately tapping it.
  • This means that with a bit of grazing, you can gain enough Aura to eliminate the most immediate threatening bullets around you and continue staying alive.
    • This however, still require you to dodge anything faster than a pellet as the grazing and regeneration are not fast enough to deal against darts.
    • Such a last minute desperate PD works like level 1 PD or a very tiny BEMP.
    • This allows you to survive infinitely so long you are careful to always move just enough to avoid darts.
    • This won't usually work against boomerangs since boomerangs have a larger hit circle which requires more movement.

Chrono Field

Upgrade Lvl	Max Duration	Max Radius
1	3.0s	170
2	3.5s
3	4.0s
4	4.5s
5	5.0s
Ultimate (6)

Ultimate grants you 0.5s of Phase Out time, which means you continue to be invincible for 0.5s outside the Chrono Field when you exit it or when CF starts to fade.

Useful Levels: 1, Ult

Brief Summary: Relatively high skill Aura. Recommended for players transiting beyond Colonel rank. Abused, it is the ultimate survival tool that will get you through any mission.

Upgrades

• When not ult, CF is simply nothing more than a positioning tool where you can safely position yourself underneath high priority invaders or dangerous turrets to eliminate them quickly.
• In fact, it is more of a pseudo level 1 PD where you can cross over lanes of bullets to safely inch your way around the field.
• Simply not very useful at lower levels.
• Being the smallest radius that never increases in upgrades make it very difficult to use at lower levels.
• Spamming small CFs at lower levels are thus really nothing more than a level 1 PD.
• At higher levels, it is better as a positional tool as mentioned above since there is more time for you to kill invaders or pop off turrets.
• Another slightly useful function of CF is that it slows bullets in the deployed CF.
  • This allows you to cross these bullets safely when CF is active.
  • Also allows you to safely plan for your CF exit.
  • However, it is difficult to tell when CF will expire.
    • Thus, pre-emptive planning is required and you need to estimate and move to your new location after CF expires earlier than when it actually expires.
    • However, if the inside of the CF is completely full of bullets, this becomes a huge problem as there is no safe exit.
    • Thus recommended you stay at one side of the CF and leave the other side only when CF is about to expire.

Strategies

• Everything changes when you unlock the ult.
• The 0.5s of Phase Out means that you have 0.5s of invincibility ANYWHERE on field after CF expires.
• 0.5s doesn't sound like much but it is enough to do nearly anything you would require.
• The most important implication of the 0.5s is it acts as a pseudo-TP, allowing to move to anywhere you want on the field after it expires.
• CF now becomes a high skill TP as well, meaning you need precise swiping skills to "teleport" wherever you want.
  • You need to be very quick and precise.
  • Make sure you land correctly and quickly.
  • This comes with practice, but is a life saver when executed correctly.
• Another important implication of Phase Out is that the pointers under Upgrade is irrelevant now.
  • You don't have to really care about where you are in the CF
  • You can be anywhere you want in the CF and still be able to reposition yourself ANYWHERE on the whole field.
  • This enhances the function of CF even further, allowing to fully concentrate on your positioning to kill invaders and pop turrets off.
  • With sufficient CF experience, you don't need to plan where you want to be before CF expires as 0.5s is enough instinct time to go where you want.
  • This eliminates the nervousness many initial CF users have from not knowing when CF will expire.
• The most important implication is how ANY size of CF gives you this 0.5s of Phase Out time.
  • This means you can continuously teleport wherever you want even with the smallest deployable CF.
  • Bear in mind the minimum radius for CF does require quite a bit of particles,
    • Sometimes you can just spin Russian Roulette (figuratively, of course) and pray that you can graze enough or get enough particles when utilizing the previous CF's Phase Out to cross massive clusters of bullets.
    • Thankfully, by killing invaders sufficiently fast enough, you are able to get the minimum CF size easily which allows you to continuously abuse this Phase Out property.
• Unless speedrunning or having an extreme excess of particles, never deploy more than one CF at any point in time as you are never able to take advantage of 2 CFs at the same time.
  • Might be useful to deploy a new CF on top of an old one if you have a long charging Zen which is either ML or MB, in order to abuse them safely.
• CF is very powerful against all types of bullets since it simply negates their effects
  • Generally a bit less powerful against slower moving bullets.
  • MIRVs are a slight problem since their explosion is usually delayed significantly which sometimes hinders appropriate planning.
• Because of the invincibility CF provides, it is also effective against lasers.
  • Remember that the 0.5 Phase Out time also allows you to jump from one side of the field to another, dealing well against any tracking laser.
  • May have a slight problem against laser spreads since landing safely between laser lanes can be a little difficult, especially with other bullets around.
• CF needs to be slightly pre-empted, as deploying a CF at the absolute last minute will not save you.
  • It takes probably 0.1s after the CF is deployed for its invincibility to take effect.
  • It is possible to die even if you can clearly hear CF being placed.

Trivia: As written by the devs, CF used to work like PD. as quoted in full, this is the history of CF in the past as according to the dev's Reddit post:

It was introduced alongside Vorpal Lance in update 2.0, December 2016. The first version of Chrono Field worked more like Point Defense, it was an Aura that was attached to the ship and you had to hold the ability to activate it. While it was active, enemy projectiles that entered the Aura would be slowed down. While the player moved around with the Aura attached, enemy projectiles would bunch up all over the battlefield. Like with Point Defense, the range would decrease while you were using it. So with low energy it would only slow down projectiles very close to the player ship. This version of the ability wasn’t very good and since you had to keep it activated it was impossible to combine it with any Zen ability, really.

It was updated about 2 months later (February 2017) to change so that the Chrono Field was deployed to stay in place, exactly like it does now. However, it only slowed down enemy projectiles, there was no invulnerability. It wasn’t until June 2017 that the invulnerability aspect was added.

Vorpal Lance

Upgrade Lvl	Damage	Counters
1	33	2
2	34.65	3
3	36.3
4	37.95	4
5	39.6
Ultimate (6)	39.6

Ultimate enables Vorpal Wake , which allows the fired VL projectile itself to clear bullets as it travels forward.

Useful Levels: 2, 5, (sometimes Ult)

Brief Summary: Easy and straightforward to use offensive Aura. Easily recommendable for all players. Potential to deal devastating damage when utilized to maximum effect. Slightly annoying at times due to RNG at play, plays quite a big factor when speedrunning. Very meta in daily missions.

Strategies

• Generally straightforward in usage.
• See a column of several invaders? Yeah, just throw in a VL. Basically, use it opportunistically.
• However, do not hesitate to use it.
  • You do not need to wait for a perfect line-up to use VL.
  • So long there are more than 3 invaders in that line (if Ravens are present), you can throw a VL.
  • Do not wait for Sparrows to line up as there is no point since they can easily escape your VL due to their rapid movement and their small size.
  • In fact, don't use VL on Sparrows.
  • You do not need to wait for the larger upfield invaders to arrive before you start throwing VLs at the Ravens and Sparrows in front.
    • In speedrunning however, always wait for all invaders to fully arrive before using VL.
    • Other than a Roc of course, which takes way too long.
  • Generally, do not use VLs on larger invaders like Herons unless there are several other invaders behind it, or there are no other smaller invaders in the wave.
  • As a general guide, using 2 VLs in Act 4 and above per wave is fine.
  • As an offensive Aura, it is your job to keep the field clean before the invaders can overwhelm you.
• If there are too many Ravens on field at once (at least 3 columns of them) and you have 3 or more VLs, perform a lance sweep
  • Simply throw out VLs equally spaced horizontally to eliminate as much as you can.
  • It is usually not sensible to throw away 4 VLs in a single wave, unless all the Ravens are hiding behind a Vulture (or 2 Eagles).
  • 3 VLs are usually enough to eliminate most of the threat.
  • In speedrunning, throwing 4 VLs is justifiable if the wave is very dense.
  • Even for dense and heavy waves, the size of larger invaders make them very vulnerable to multiple VLs, making them very weak or completely obliterating them.
  • Eagles will eat at least 2 VLs with major damage, while 3 VLs will take them out entirely.
    • It is recommended to destroy 2 Eagles immediately with 3 VLs in speedrunning.
    • In survival, you can also destroy 2 Eagles with 2 or 3 VLs if they have dangerous turrets.
  • VLs should not be stockpiled during dense or heavy waves, but exhausted to the point where at least one side of the field is almost clear of all invaders (leaving either only 1 Raven or some Sparrows).
  • For light waves, only use one VL.
    • This gets rid of one side of the light wave to allow you to collect particles leftover from the previous wave.
    • In speedrunning however, 2 Ravens is already a good enough excuse to throw down a VL, so 4 Ravens mean 2 VLs automatically.
• Due to the fact that VL can reach upfield invaders hiding behind other invaders, it is extremely useful is reducing the threat very efficiently.
  • Especially against tons of Ravens with lots of turrets to pump in bullets, hiding behind Eagles or larger.
  • Upfield larger invaders can also be disarmed easily by sniping out their dangerous turrets, such as those on Eagles and Vultures.
• For certain ships, where the main weapon is not a very good turret popper, VL is able to make up for that function. Use it on Vultures and above.
• Furthermore, the turret popping function does not interfere much with its Raven clearing capabilities since it is still likely that you will be able to catch invaders behind even when targeting turrets.
  • This function is very useful especially on upfield Eagles with deadly middle turrets as well.
  • However, it takes more than 1 VL to pop off a turret on an armor Vulture.
  • It takes only 1 VL to take out a turret on a Shielded invader though, of course, after the shield is downed.
  • It is suggested you use 1 VL and then finish off the turret with your main weapon unless you are extremely desperate to get rid of it.
• The less known useful feature about VL is Vorpal Wake. Do not underestimate its utility.
  • Vorpal Wake is very useful for ships that do not have a defensive Zen.
  • Similar to riding up an ML to take advantage of its bullet capabilities, you can do the same with VL.
  • Riding up beyond the midfield is risky since the width of bullet clearing is quite small.
    • There are cases, however, where pushing up all the way upfield is beneficial in order to collect more particles for more VLs.
    • Take note that this is dangerous and only recommended when speedrunning.
  • For normal usage, this function is generally not used much, but it is possible to time the VL to clear bullets which are milliseconds away from hitting you.
    • It should only be used as a last resort.

Trivia: It takes exactly 25 bullet grazes to gain a complete charge of VL in the tutorial for VL.

Phalanx

Upgrade Lvl	Strength	Counters
1	100%	2
2	108%	3
3	116%	4
4	125%	5
5	137%	6
Ultimate (6)	150%

Ultimate also increases the size of the Phalanx to 150% , extending it slightly downwards to have better side protection.

Useful Levels: 3, 5, Ult

Brief Summary: A slightly underpowered defensive Aura, powerful in the hands of the skilled. Can be equivalent to small bursts of BEMPs. It may also be used as small Barriers, although it is not a very effective function.

Upgrades

• The efficiency of Phalanx increases with more counters.
• Having 2 counters at Level 1 is pretty insufficient for defensive purposes especially when the wave drags for quite long at later waves.
• The strength of the Phalanx also does make a small difference in each charge of a Phalanx being able to be more effective.
  • The strength of Phalanx at level 1, however, while a little less efficient, is still satisfactory compared to when it is max.
• The ult is a very useful upgrade that severely enhances the shoveling function to clear more horizontal space.
  • However, the increase in width also means more bullets than required to block off the most dangerous bullets headed for you will also hit your Phalanx, which may hinder the barrier function.
• The ult can also mean a difference in blocking off bullets coming from sideways, particularly boomerangs or pellets from MIRVs.

Strategies

• 24 bullets, or a full 1s exposure to 2 lasers will break a Phalanx of 100% strength.
• The primary function of Phalanx is a shovel. Think of it as a BEMP that clears in an elongated tall oval shape.
• It creates a small breathing space for you to have some freedom to move around and reduce the pressure of bullets on you.
• It is difficult to use as a repositioning tool since shoveling means you have to push forward in order to maximize it.
  • Fortunately, you can shove diagonally in order to re-position yourself, but this does quite a bit of skill.
  • You can then retreat backwards to complete the repositioning.
• Phalanx is more of a scalpel bullet clearing tool.
• While there is a strength stat to it, it can impressively clear a small area of bullets no matter how many bullets are there in that small area since Phalanx has a tiny Phase Out time which continues to clear bullets even after the strength is depleted.
• This is roughly equivalent to launching 6 mini BEMPs, which is more useful than one full BEMP which you may not always need.
  • However, unlike BEMP, Phalanx does not eliminate bullets immediately in front of you, so you have to use it pre-emptively
  • Be careful before you actually shovel, because there can be bullets between your ship core and the Phalanx.
• Being brave with Phalanx rewards massively.
  • Phalanx has extreme capability to clear out an impressive stretch of bullets if you stretch the shoveling capability of Phalanx.
  • When you deploy Phalanx for shoveling, do not be afraid to go all the way to shovel as the very short Phase Out time is actually enough time for you to react to Phalanx breaking, especially with the screenshake and audio cue when Phalanx actually breaks.
  • It is a bit of a strange defence: To defend yourself, you have to charge right into the massive dense field of bullets once deployed to take full advantage of it.
• Phalanx can also be used as a mini barrier.
  • This function is to aid an offensive attack, such as charging offensive Zens or aggressively using your main weapon to try and pop a turret off.
  • Unfortunately, as the strength of Phalanx is weak, it is not too effective especially for charging ML or MB which takes a long time. However, it is still very doable.
  • Like barrier, if you are using Phalanx for this function, it also needs to be slightly pre-emptive as a last minute Phalanx will not save you since bullets in between your core and the Phalanx will not be eliminated.
  • This part makes Phalanx very annoying as you need a lot of experience with Phalanx in order to know what is the allowance time to deploy it so that bullets coming for you will hit the Phalanx and not pass through it.
    • It is unlike Barrier where you have a visual indicator of where the barrier will be.
    • For Phalanx, you need experience with it to know it.
    • Once you know it, however, it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
• How suddenly Phalanx can break can sometimes be an issue, even for experienced players.
  • Sometimes the Phalanx would be already slightly damaged and you may not know it.
  • Particularly, against lasers, Phalanxes can break quickly and unexpectedly.
    • Even though lasers are not as effective on Phalanxes than on barriers, a large amount of lasers aimed at it, or lasers coupled with a cluster of bullets hitting will quickly break it and the lasers will kill you instantly.
    • This results in the need to deploy another Phalanx to replace the severely weakened Phalanx in order to sustain the protection.
      • The color of the Phalanx tells you when it might potentially break, although the color contrast can be slightly difficult to tell.
    • Unlike barrier, multiple Phalanxes cannot stack, resulting in a waste of particles.
    • Thus, when using Phalanx as a shovel, it is recommended you shovel all the way until it breaks, or simply burn it away by clearing stray bullets.
    • Try not to leave a well weakened Phalanx in front of you as that can create a false sense of security.
• Phalanx can also be a very important positioning tool for speedrunning, particularly in early waves.
  • You can afford to use Phalanx to move freely around the sparsely bullet filled area so that you need not worry too much about crashing into random bullets.
  • The ultimate, which increases the width of the Phalanx, helps this even more.
  • It is still better to move diagonally upwards than to move horizontally.
    • Shoveling diagonally upwards also puts you in closer range with invaders, which can be beneficial for speedrunning.
    • But it can also be dangerous since going point blank with invaders means being near to turrets that can shoot underneath your Phalanx and kill you instantly.
• During early Acts, you will usually have a healthy stockpile of Phalanxes, sometimes even having the full 6 Phalanxes.
  • This is not a huge problem since 6 Phalanxes is good to stockpile on heavier waves.
  • In fact, you should always try to keep the Phalanx count up, with at least 4 Phalanxes at hand.
  • This is to reserve for heavy waves where you can easily burn through many counters of Phalanx.
    • Don't hesistate to burn them, unless the next wave is also a heavy wave.

Trivia: It takes exactly 24 bullet grazes to gain a complete charge of Phalanx in the tutorial for Phalanx.

Ion Cannon

Upgrade Lvl	Stun Time	Counters
1	4s	2
2		3
3		4
4		5
5		6
Ultimate (6)

The stun radius of IC is 100.

Ultimate gives IC a blast damage of 10 in a blast radius of 50. (A non ult IC does not do damage at all)

Useful Levels: 3, Ult

Brief Summary: Useful against big invaders such as Eagles and above. Struggles against dense waves. Difficult to use since crowds are quite common, but there are ways to slightly overcome crowds. Not recommended for players with a skill level of intermediate or below.

Upgrades

• A Level 1 Ion Cannon is almost useless, unless you encounter large invaders at the front of the wave.
• Using IC against a closely packed cluster of Ravens and Sparrows can help too.
• It's generally be ok to use 1 IC every wave.
• With more charges, reserve 4 or more charges of IC.
• As such, IC is quite useless at lower levels because a non-ult IC does not deal any damage at all, making nothing more than a pre-emptive defensive tool.
  • You see those large invaders that are within your reach when a wave arrives? Yeah, just fire off those charges to stun them.
• It sounds straightforward, but ineffective against waves with the larger and more troublesome invaders at the back.
• It's not so straightforward in practice due to rapid small invader random movement downfield that can make aiming the larger invaders behind difficult.
• If you are faced with Eagles in front of a Vulture, simply stun both Eagles and then move over the Eagle to stun the Vulture. (Or stun one Eagle if you run out of IC charges)

Strategies

• Unlocking the ult is a huge help, which makes IC now deal BLAST damage.
  • This allows for IC to have limited crowd clearing capabilities.
  • When you know you are going to deal with a wave with lots of Ravens and Sparrows in front, you can reserve at least 4 charges for that wave.
  • On such Sparrow or Raven heavy waves, throwing down multiple ICs is not a problem since you can quickly refill all if not almost all of the IC charges after expanding your entire pool of IC charges.
    • Always reserve a few ICs for the next wave.
    • If it's a heavy wave, reserve at least 2 ICs.
• Knowing where to throw ICs is a strategic decision.
  • If the downfield is very dense with Ravens and Sparrows, but there are threatening Eagles or larger behind, throw 2-3 ICs to stun the invaders in front.
    • Then go behind them and stun the larger invaders.
    • If the turrets on the invaders in front doesn't track you quickly (if there are no darts), you can even skip over them to stun the larger invaders behind.
    • While the invaders behind are stunned, you can destroy the invaders in front of it
      • You can also focus on popping off turrets on the larger invaders above if the invaders in front aren't at all threatening.
  • Ignore invaders behind the Vulture unless they are Eagles with threatening turrets.
• Another very advanced technique is if you are expecting larger invaders at the back, you can pre-fire the IC.
  • The timing, however, needs to be perfect as too late will cause it to hit a smaller invader in front, while firing too early will just waste that IC.
  • This requires practice, and also knowledge of how fast invaders come onto the field.
  • The IC is fired only while the invaders are descending down to fill the screen.
  • Everything else depends on its position on field.
• With the blast damage component of IC, it allows for limited speedrunning capabilities.
  • You can now start using IC at earlier waves in a useful way, especially using the blast damage to eliminate multiple Sparrows.
    • It helps against Ravens, but you should only aim to do this between 2 Ravens, the blast radius of IC is too small for anything more.
    • You can also slot in a Sparrow or two between the Raven(s) for the blast damage.
  • IC is also a great compliment to slow firing ships as IC completely stops the random movement of invaders, unlike SEMP.
    • This means being better able to confirm the hits of your precious slow firing main weapons on Ravens and perhaps even Herons.
• The main selling point of ICs is its capabilities to deal against Rocs and Condors.
  • However, you need to stockpile at least 3 ICs against a dangerous Condor or Roc.
    • 2 well-placed ICs will always fully stun a Condor or Roc.
    • If dangerous Eagles appear as the "welcoming party" (necessitating 2 more ICs to stun them both), be sure to reserve the full 6 charges of IC against that wave.
  • Trying to use the stun time to reach and pop off difficult to reach turrets is often not enough, so one has to back off momentarily to quickly throw another 2 ICs on both left and right sides of the Condor or Roc to keep them stunned.
  • Otherwise, even as some of the other easier to reach turrets may not be so threatening, the combined strength of the other turrets resuming their firing may make going back down after destroying dangerous difficult to reach turrets very dangerous.
• In the case of a Roc, the sheer amount of turrets can make it difficult to go back down.
  • The slightly higher health of a turret on a Roc compared to other invaders also mean more than 2 ICs are required to eliminate all 4 of its difficult-to-reach turrets.
  • At best, with only 2 dangerous difficult-to-reach turrets, 2 ICs are enough if the Roc is Unprotected or Armored.
  • If you have 4 difficult-to-reach dangerous turrets, then you can at best only pop off 2 of these turrets, before needing to throw another IC.
  • Now, this situation can really depend, as the sheer amount of turrets mean that more often than not, you have to re-stun the entire Roc, which means throwing down another 2 more ICs, amounting to 4 ICs in total before being able to destroy all 4 difficult-to-reach turrets.
  • If you have a Shielded Roc, then destroying 4 dangerous difficult-to-reach turrets mean stockpiling a full 6 ICs.
    • If there's only 2 dangerous turrets on a Shielded Roc, then 4 ICs are needed.
    • More often than not, having a Shielded Roc means you have to choose only 2 difficult-to-reach turrets, even if there's 4 of them. since stockpiling the full 6 charges of IC can be difficult, especially if the previous wave is also difficult.
• In the case of a Condor, the close proximity of turrets on a Condor mean that you likely need to keep the whole Condor stunned instead.
  • Thankfully, there are only 2 difficult-to-reach turrets so a maximum of 4 ICs are often enough.
  • If there are 2 more dangerous turrets at the front, simply throw another IC in the middle.
  • If it's on the side, throw another one at one side and destroy it quickly before heading over to the other side to take out the other one.
  • If you have enough ICs, of course, you may throw 2 more to destroy both dangerous turrets.
  • A well-placed IC can stun all dangerous turrets on a Condor, provided they aren't on the extreme left and right sides of the Condor.

Goliath Missile

Upgrade Lvl	Blast Damage	Counters
1	High	2
2		3
3
4		4
5
Ultimate (6)	Very High (24)

The blast damage of GMs is 24, while the impact damage of GMs is 10 at ult level. Ultimate for Goliath Missile increases the blast radius to 115% of the original radius.

Useful Levels: Ult

Brief Summary: Basically a mini Aurora Nuke. Slow moving straight firing projectile which is difficult to use. Very limited turret popping ability since the impact damage is very small. Generally good for concentrated areas of Ravens and Sparrows.

Upgrades

• A level 1 GM is pretty much useless since the blast radius is small which makes it very prone to RNG and very difficult to aim properly to affect a reasonable number of invaders.
• Coupled with the fact that it takes 2 GMs to kill a Raven, having only 2 GMs at hand is pretty much only useful for eliminating that small cluster of 1-3 Ravens.
  • And then you are stuck with eliminating the rest of the crowd yourself.

Strategies

• GM only becomes usable at its ult level where the blast damage is increased and the radius is bigger.
  • Now you are able to catch more Ravens and deal considerable damage to larger invaders.
• As GMs are very slow moving, they must be pre-empted.
  • This means that they must be fired when the last invader of the previous wave has been destroyed, unless the wave has a frontline Vulture or frontline Condor.
  • This is particularly true for light waves as it is very easy for invaders to simply dodge your GMs.
  • It is also true for dense waves as a pre-fired GM can penetrate deep into the invader lines and explode in the midfield, causing the blast damage to be dealt to both upfield and frontline invaders.
• The impact of GMs on any Raven will kill it instantly.
  • Sometimes, it's a good idea to use it on a Raven on one side of the field while you deal with the other side of the field, aka Divide and Conquer.
• Unfortunately, since GMs are very slow moving, they are very prone to missing, or otherwise, very prone to be intercepted by Sparrows.
  • This can be incredibly annoying since the impact damage would be wasted on Sparrows or Ravens while they can be hit on larger invaders such as Herons or above.
  • In fact, it would be nice if you could aim GMs at Herons and above since 2 GM blasts will take out a Raven.
    • It's ok to hit Ravens if they are the only invaders on field, or the Heron(s) are too far away from the Ravens.
  • Firing GMs early would minimize the chances of frontline Sparrows intercepting the GMs.
  • In pure Sparrow waves, firing 1 GM is a good idea to eliminate most of them very quickly in early waves.
    • Just hope and pray for these waves as there is a chance all these Sparrows would just dodge the GM you fire.
• GMs are generally more effective at close range so try your best to always go up close to invaders to fire GMs to secure powerful AoE damage.
  • You should especially do so if you do not need to charge a long charging Zen.

Trivia: It takes exactly 30 bullet grazes to gain a complete charge of GM in the tutorial for GM.

Blade Storm

Upgrade Lvl	Max Damage	Max Radius
1	80	350
2	84	375
3	88	400
4	92	425
5	96	450
Ultimate (6)	100	500

Ultimate for Blade Storm also includes Omnislash , which increases the number of hits from 10 hits to 20 hits, which means less overkill of targets.

Specific recommended usage of Blade Storm will be mentioned under Shogun itself, since Blade Storm is unique to Shogun.

Useful Levels: None in particular

Brief Summary: A hybrid between MS and LS, it can be described as a fast damage disposing version of LS at times, since the targeting of Blade Storm can be quite random, just like LS.