Battle Nations Housing

In Battle Nations, you can build several types of Housing.  This is important to increase your population so that you have people to work in your other construction.  You can also collect taxes from your Housing.  You will be asked to build Shelter, Camp, Hovel and Bunkhouse housing as part of the campaign, but you can tear them all down after the mission and build whatever you like.  Note that the tax rate for each type of housing varies widely:

 

You'll notice that Shelters have the highest gold return per person per hour.  The per person metric is important because you will always be lvl limited for population, i.e., the game will limit how much population you can have based on your current level.  For example, a Hovel generates 75 gold every 4 hours, but a Shelter will generate up to 240 gold every 4 hours.  Even if you only check your Shelter twice an hour, you'll still get 120 gold over 4 hours.  Three Hovels costs 2,400 gold and 3 hours to build, is 15 population and generates 225 gold every 4 hours.  Five Shelters costs 250 gold and 25 seconds to build, is also 15 population and generates 600-1,200 gold over 4 hours.

Clan night tonight. 9pm PT. Halo CEA.

Game on.

Battle Nations Basics

There's at least two clan members playing Battle Nations now, so I'm not motivated to start posting about it.  The tutorial missions are decent at getting you started, but there's no instructions, so there's a few things you might miss.  The Battle Nations Wiki is a great resource, but here's a primer on some of the basic controls:

1. User Info: This is where you pick up messages, change your icon and other settings
2. Enemies: Raiders and players in your Outpost show up like this.  Touch the player icon and a dialog box will slide out to the right with the option to Attack.  Touch Attack to engage in battle.
• NOTE: You can always Retreat from a battle for free, doesn't cost you anything.  For example, you can select Attack to see what units are there, and then Retreat if you don't think you can beat them.
3. Missions: Each of these icons represents an active campaign mission that you can go do.  Touch them to see what you need to do next.
4. Active tile: In general, you should always touch the ground tile that you want to use instead of the activity icon above it.  For example, if you want to activate the Field in this screenshot, you should touch where the "4" is, and NOT where the scissor-icon is.  This is true for construction as well as for units in battle.
5. Minimize: Touch here to minimize the controls at the bottom of the screen
6. Construction: Touch here to access all the things you can build
7. Move: Touch here to enter the Move interface where you can move anything you've built, rotate tiles, and delete (sell) items.
• It's always free to move anything, and you can move things even while they're being built
• You can delete trees.  As far as I can tell, they don't serve any purpose and just take up space.
8. Friends: Touch here to see your friends or campaign characters.  This is how you go to visit other lands.
9. PvP: Touch here to engage in player-vs-player matchmaking.  Will put you into battle with random players of the same level as yourself.  I don't really know how this works yet.
10. Armies: Touch here to see all the units you have, garrisons that are in bunkers, or armies in other lands.  Remember that if you Raid or Occupy a friend's Outpost, you'll need to retrieve your armies here when they're done.  It takes some time for them to return.  If you don't claim them here, they'll be unavailable until you do.
11. Nanopods: These cost real money and are extremely valuable, I recommend you don't spend them until the campaign requires them.  There's a campaign mission that requires 75 nanopods.  The easiest free method to get nanopods is by using tapjoy.com.  Access it from your iDevice and follow the directions.
12. Resources: Touch here to cycle through all your resources and how much you have of each.
13. Demand: Touch here to see what your workers want.  Doesn't really come into play all that often, it's more useful to look for the blue arrows when choosing what goods to make.

Battle Nations

I've started playing Battle Nations for iOS and am deeply addicted.  I need friends to play with.  Join me.  It's free.

In Battle Nations, you take command of the elite Imperial Army as you expand and secure the empire. Gather precious resources and build a thriving nation to power your machine of war. Train your troops and battle the attacking rebel forces for dominance of the land.

Battle Nations Features Include:

• Robust Story Driven Campaign: Join the ranks of the Imperial Army and fight your way through over 130 missions
• Strategic turn-based combat: Command dozens of unique troops and vehicles in battle
• Real-time PvP Battles: Queue up and battle other Battle Nations players from around the world for prizes
• PvP Invasions: Fight with Friends and invade their empire or help a friend in need and repel an attack
• Base Construction: Build a network of structures to support and protect your empire
• Resource Management: Find, gather and refine precious resources to fuel your army

Clan night tonight. 9pm PT. Halo CEA.

Challenges available today:

1. Light Fare – Kill 100 enemies in any game mode in Reach – 3000 cR
2. Leadership Element – Kill 30 enemy leaders in the Campaign today – 1750 cR
3. Just a Shower – Complete any Campaign mission on Normal or harder with Thunderstorm on – 4000 cR
4. Double Nickels – Earn 2 Killing Sprees in a multiplayer Matchmaking game – 3000 cR
5. Weekly: Play to Win – Win 77 games in multiplayer Matchmaking this week – 20343 cR

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all have better things to do tonight than play Xbox.  If you don't and are crying at home alone, send me a text and I may be able to join after 10pm.

Clan night tonight. 9pm PT. Halo CEA.

Please don't make MEAN and I have a mandate again.