Flushing out the troublemakers

He is in all states.  He lurks in corners, biding his time... he sets out looking for the weaklings, the troops that stray too far from their base.  He uses deception to deflect blame, chat rooms to inflame passions.  Then he strikes.  You come in to find your farms ablaze, or the troops you sent out mining never report back.  You prepare a counter strike, collect your forces, call in your bigs.  The suddenly he stops.  He shields up, random teleports away.  You check the name in your battle reports, but he changed it, so it no longer exists.  He is just gone, like a fart in the wind.  These guys are the bane of a states existence.  They live double lives, one as an upstanding citizen from a reputable alliance... the other who changes names, joins an alliance he hopes to defame, and sticks a finger in the state rules.

The good news is states have low tolerance for these characters.  Big guns are given shoot-on-site authority to take them out, if found.  So how do you track these guys?

Step 1: Create a Profile of your attacker
In order to properly track an individual, you need to take account of who they are.  These properties include the player's name, base name, commander, power, comments on their wall, mail messages, and captured commander locations.  Some properties are more fungible than others.

• Captured Commanders: They can let them go at any time
• Alliance Rename:  Leaving an alliance is free, aside from dumping your loyalty points.  Renaming an alliance is cheap in the alliance store.
• Base Rename: This cost 5000 loyalty points in the alliance store, or something like 50 gold in the item store.
• Player Rename: This also costs 5000 loyalty points, or a small sum of gold in the item store.
• Commander Rename:  Commander names tend to be a little more sticky, since it costs a 2000 gold investment to rename.
• Power:  The cost to significantly change this metric depends on the size.
• Comments on their wall: I'm not sure if you can or cannot remove comments from a players wall (which outsiders can post to), but I guarantee most of the time they don't remember to do this.
• Mail: if they sent you a message, its too late for them

Step 2: Identify and Tag candidates

You'll want to quickly check all of the above if they are attacking you, or add them immediately to your "blocked" list.  One of the special properties of the "blocked" list, their name will update whenever they change it.

So you've collected a profile of some of these above facts.  Most commonly, they quickly dump their name and alliance.  How does that help you?

• If they sent you a message, keep an eye on the "from" in the message.  I believe it updates to the new name when they are renamed.
• If they have captured your commander, you will notice their location in the commander jail pane.  This is usually a reason they don't hold commanders after a raid.
• If they are high powered (greater than 10 million), there are often very few people within their power range on the leaderboard.  While you can't always isolate them directly, you can usually get a small list of candidates that will need further scrutiny.
• If they attacked with an alliance tag, that still gives you a place to identify candidates.  Perhaps they only changed their name.  In this case, there are only 100 possible candidates in an alliance, and usually you can eliminate the vast majority of them rapidly, based on other details you noticed, like size or power.

From your list of candidates, check the other information in your profile of them as a cross reference.  Commander name, comments, or odd player activity (like they are still renaming, or changing alliance) are all relevant.  When you are confident you've discovered his new identity, add him to the "blocked" list immediately.  Now he is tagged, and you will be able to track their name indefinitely.

Step 3: Track their location

This is often the hardest step.  They use random teleports to move around and then dump their identity, so sometimes its useful to let them settle for a bit, feel comfortable that they've lost you.  But you have their identity tagged, so you can afford to be patient.

• If they've captured your commander, the coordinates will be listed.  This is the shortest way to find them.
• If they are in an open alliance which you can join, there are sneeky ways to locate them using the "trade resources" panel.  You don't actually need a location to send resources to them.  Once you start the donation, an arrow pointing you to their location appears on the map.  Follow it to them, and they are yours.
• The downside to the previous method is they know resources are coming, and it puts them on their guard, which blows your critical cover.  But you can still find them by triangulating their position.  I've attached a sample worksheet, along with an internet circle intersection calculator, where I use three known locations to prove I can triangulate that same location.  The idea is you use a known reference point (another base in the alliance), the distance to that reference point from your base, and the time it takes for resources to arrive from the trade window to create a multiplier of distance/time that can be used to convert the time it would take to deliver those resources into a distance from the base.  Then you note your current position, and the time it would take to deliver resources to your enemy.  Then you random teleport, and note your new position, and the time it would take to deliver resources to your enemy from your new location.  Use your multiplier to turn those times into distances, and then input them into the circle-intersection calculator, which will give you the two locations where the enemy could be located.  Then you just jump to those locations, and search around a bit.  Due to rounding errors, I think they could be within about a screenshot distance of either location.
• In the worse case, you can do a grid search of the map.  I recommend splitting up this task with other people in your alliance.  I've had good success with this method as a last resort.

Step 4: Wait for their shields to drop

Now comes the waiting.  If they threw up a shield while still at your base, you can estimate the possible times when their shield might come down.  People most commonly use the 8 hour shields you can purchase in the alliance store with loyalty points, so this is a big target time.  Other times include 24 hours, or 72 hours... after that, I'd be more worried that they would relocate than anything.

Given these steps, you should be able to better handle the troublemakers in your state.  If you have any tips for tracking players down that I haven't thought of, let me know!

the black market

We've got a new type of rebel target, the "black market".  At first, it works like a normal rebel target, giving you rewards for attacking it.  But once you get it down to zero, you can enter the black market store to purchase items with credit.  I made the mistake of max attacking the store... once you breech the perimeter, you don't get any additional prizes... I'd recommend going one hit at a time to maximize the amount of black market credit you receive.

Inside the store, there is a note about how to get additional credits... #1 is by attacking black market stores.  #2 is through sales, which I didn't see as available yet.  #3 is through the black market shooting gallery, but I haven't been able to figure out where that is yet.

This is an early update, so I'm sure more to come.

trading coin tax free

There is a neat little trick to trade coin while dodging the tax man... using bounties!  The steps are as follows:

1. Set up a farm with say 100-1k troops.  It must be in a different alliance than the account from which you are trading coins
2. Attack this farm with your commander and 1 troop.  Your goal is to get captured.
3. Send away troops from the farm on a war rally to protect them.
4. Place a bounty on your commander's release equal to the number of coins you want to trade.
5. Have your trading partner attack the farm, releasing the troops and gaining the coin.

There is some risk to this strategy, as any player could attempt to free the bounty, in which case you lose your coins.  But to save that tax rate for a large trade is really worth while.

Full Auto Mode

Full Auto Mode is one of a handful of benefits you can't get in Mobile Strike without spending some money.  I waited for it to show up in my $5.00 sale before I purchased.  First you have to understand that each shot in full auto mode costs 50k in ammo, which is pretty pricey (10x more ammo than standard mode).  But per shot, you get 11x the payout, so that is an improvement right there.  In normal mode, you have a percentage bar that drops after each shot, and when you reach 0, you get to select one of three crates.  The same  is true in full auto, except instead you get a 5x5 board of hidden prizes and grenades.  When you hit a grenade, your bonus ends, but usually you can get a few extra prizes per turn.  The 11x increase in the prize size still applies.  Probably the biggest payout is the "free" daily shot, which you receive in both the normal and full auto mode, but that amounts to an 11x increase in daily prizes from full auto.

The Hive

Why are people so tied to "hives"?  These large clusters of bases are supposed to provide mutual support during an attack, but in my experience, it doesn't work.  It is civil war tactics in a game where you are armed with machine guns.

Pros

• Short distances for trade
• Short response times for counter attacking invaders
• Short gathering times for war rallies
• Group attacking local rebel targets is easy
• Close clustering provides a time buffer from attack by enemies, as they have no place to land

Cons

• Hives are targets for players attacking to gather resources, which means you have to go further to gather
• Hive members compete for local resources amongst themselves
• Attackers have short distances, which increases the number of bases they can hit in a limited period
• Hives are easy to track down

So it is true that you lose some versatility when trading, but the principal component of the game is collecting resources, not giving them away.  With that in mind, the economics sways to the con.

Collective defense in this game is a joke.  We are all individual defenders, and rely on traps and hospitals to counterbalance the attackers advantage.  Hives provide a mechanism for rapid counterstrike, but a well disciplined attacker can avoid counter punches with good timing and a stock of fallbacks and deploy speedups to vary arrival time deploy.  If you are constantly deployed, you are very hard to hit  (if there is nothing in your base to lose).

Even with very large hives, I've seen a pair of attackers be almost unstoppable, with one planted in the hive with shields up, one constantly rallied.  When they attack, they ravage the farms (up to their warehouse limits), rally their troops for protection, and ship the gathered resources to the shielded partner as a bank.  Its almost unstoppable.

With small hives, you have a perpetual target on your back.  Large players randomly teleport around the board, or site to site hop into the middle of small hives to collect resources.  Unless you have several level 21s who can provide round the clock coverage, these kind of attackers are hard to dissuade.

Hives put too many men in the same foxhole.  Five men are a juicy opportunity, one or two is a waste of bullets.  In my opinion, a more correct strategy is spreading your bases around a region, approximately one base per screenshot.  How does this help?  You trade a little bit on group war rallying and trading speed, but you don't provide a way for attackers to quick strike multiple bases.  Being spread out tends to give you better access to local gathering resources.  Spread out hives make it very hard to locate an alliance, and that kind of secrecy is a big win.  All together, I believe this is the appropriate strategy for the future of Mobile Strike.

Gaming Extreme challenges with a new account

One thing to note about Mobile Strike is if you ever want to reach the top, you probably will have to spend some money.  Upgrading your "War Room", "Embassy", "Prison", and "Death Row" require specialty items that rarely appear.  But there may be some hope.  In the early game, extreme challenges will make items like "Golden Bullet", and "Tactics Manuals" more readily available.  The problem is you can rapidly outgrow this stage, where the challenges are still manageable.  Good players preach patience, so you can take advantage of this period as much as possible.

There is a way to extend the length of this period, if you have a lot of free time.  Many extreme challenges require to increase your "power" in order to receive higher tier prizes.  However, losing power doesn't actually hurt you.  For instance, if you are attacked, and lose some troops, your total for the competition doesn't actually go down.  The same applies for buildings; if you demolish a building, you are not penalized.  How is this important?

You can game this by maxing out your "free speed up" by improving your VIP, and increasing your construction speed.  Then, during such an extreme challenge, build a building only large enough that you can still auto complete it without using any additional speedups.  Once you reach that max size, demolish it, and repeat.  While tedious, you can effectively trade gathered resources for tier 1-3 prizes, which includes gold, XP, more VIP points, and those illusive specialty items that you will need to be a power player down the road.

I verified this only as a proof of concept... I myself don't have the patience to wait.  Let me know if you've had similar experiences in gaming the extreme challenges.

Tactics: the bear trap

Once state vs state kill events start, you have to be on your toes.  Players warp in, quickly probe for weakness, and lash out.  Since typically kills are the metric being tracked, small players can load up on traps and hospitals to get their fare share of points.  Large players have a harder time attracting medium sized attackers, because attacking can't be backed by hospitals, while defending can.  However, large players can set an ambush.  Here's how.

First, create a small force of tier 1 or tier 2 troops.  These are to be the bait at your base.  Second, create a large force of tier 3 troops, which will be used to ambush an attacker.  Ideally, you have enough hospital bids to support both forces. Third, send your main force on an 8 hour war rally.  This is the critical part, since these troops do not appear in your defense when scouted, so you can disguise your strength.  If you cancel your war rally, they immediately become available for defense.  Third, re-speck your commander to max out defensive capabilities, and equip him with whatever gear you have that will give him the biggest defensive bonus.

Now we wait for the kill event to start.  When you spot an enemy in your region, you should start by scouting them.  This is important, because it will tell you if your enemy is too strong to ambush, and often a mechanism to earn a counter scout.  If they have determined that you are an appropriate target, they may start a march towards your base.  Now, if your scout revealed that they are too big to ambush and the march is sufficiently far away, you should send a second scout to see how many troops they left behind.  If you determine that your large hidden force is sufficient to defeat him, wait until just before his march reaches your base, and cancel the war rally.  With the trap sprung, you can often defeat your enemy while taking significantly fewer casualties, especially if they have sent a smaller force based on an initial scout.  Suddenly, your opponent is surprised to find he has lost his force, and you are on the scoreboard.