Tutorial 10: ACS

    • Tutorial 10: ACS

      The Alliance Combat System (ACS) permits fighting together with other players, so that no player is always on his own. On the one hand thereby you can attack a target with friends, and on the other hand you also can deploy your fleet to defend alliance partners or at players, who are on your buddy list. Thus you cannot only attack significantly bigger targets, but also a few important tactical alternatives are available.

      Important box:
      Keep in mind that, as explained in >>Raids<<, the whole >>Noob protection<< system has to be considered while you attack players even if they are marked as honorable target to you.

      ==How to attack together?==
      To start an ACS-attack, one of the players first has to initiate an attack with a fleet. As soon as it was launched, he can transform it in union and invite other players via the fleet menu, they have to be in the alliance or on the buddy list. Those players will get an invitation for the union and will be able to join the attack with their fleets via clicking on the short link on the second fleet page ("Combat forces"). All in all, five players can join in the union combat; the union fleet can consist of a maximum 16 fleets, altogether. But look out: all fleets of a union are geared to the slowest one. So, if a slower fleet is added to a union, the arrival time of all fleets will be set back. That can also be leveraged as the chapter >>Slowdown by ACS<<

      =How to create ACS-attack?=
      [Image - You have to click on the icon which is into the red circle]

      =How to invite/delete people to your ACS-attack?=
      [Image2 - In the blue box it will appear the players of your buddylist and your alliance. You can select from one to four players and invite them to the ACS-attack]

      If a fleet is more than 30% slower as the union, it will not be able to join. If is about an interception, at which it is important that the fleet union arrives exactly at the right time, the ACS-attack should be arranged accordingly. It will be the best, if the player, who has the longest approach, starts it. All the others can send their fleets, without reducing speed of the first fleet. At interceptions you also can save deuterium by timing with a single ship at first, and after that joining the combat fleet. In this way, if you have timed the attack in a wrong way, you will have to call back only one ship and not sending the whole fleet twice. You especially will have to pay attention, if the attack is cancelled, in this case, every player has to call back his own fleet manually – if only one fleet cancels the flight, the rest of the union will just continue. If the fleet, which starts the union, is called back, no other fleets will be able to join the union.

      ==Defending together==

      With a union you can surprise an enemy not only with an attack, but also with a defense. If you want to defend a planet of a member of the alliance or a buddy, you just will have to send your fleet there and to choose the mission "hold". Before sending your fleet, you will be able to specify how long it shall stay at the target. As long as it is deployed there, it will participate in every combat in line with the defender, if the moon or planet is attacked, but whose owner cannot control it himself. But during this time, the fleet constantly needs deuterium, that is why the holding time is limited by the cargo bay of the fleet. If you want to fly back earlier as it was planned, you will only have to click on call back in the fleet menu, to cancel the holding operation. A maximum four players are able to hold on a foreign planet/moon; all in all 15 fleets are possible.

      If you attack a planet or a moon, on which one of your fleets is holding, your fleets will fight against each other.


      ==Alliance Depot==
      The alliance depot acts as a deuterium supply for friendly fleets while they are defending a planet or a moon, to stay there longer. For this you choose the alliance depot at the facility menu on the defended planet and you enter the amount of deuterium, which shall be send to the fleet and confirm the process. The bigger the depot, the more deuterium you can send per hour like that. That facility proves unusable, because in practice you normally do not hold your fleet on a foreign planet more than one hour. So you can confidently save the time and the resource, which you need for the construction.