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Tip of the Week #8 - Repair Time Management

By Windonut - 7th October 2012 - 17:30 PM

Date: October 7, 2012
Game: Tiberium Alliances, patch September 20, 2012
Author: Windonut
The forgotten have once again hidden in the far end of their little shed, it's your time to strike. Prepare the airforce, train the infantry units and bot the screws back in the tanks, get ready to attack. In Tiberium Alliances it's all about attacking as effectively as possible. Will we simply get rid of one plank and infiltrate the shed or will we simply run over the whole thing? There's endless combinations of units and tactics, which can be used in every single way, however there's one thing that's holding you back; Repair Time.


Repair Time is a component that was added in the game that stops players from attacking endlessly. If your units are brought down to 0% health, they need to be repaired. A unit that is at 0% health is unable to perform another attack, however one with 1% is able to do it. There's a catch though, a unit with 1% health will barely do damage and get shot down easily, therefor it's important and most efficient to have all units at 100% every attack. In order to repair units to 100% from 0%, it will cost time and Crystals. Crystals are easy to understand; repairing units will cost Crystals, so it's important to always have some Crystals left in your base. It's these moments when you don't want to be standing without any Crystals or Crystal supply packs, therefor it's important to spend Crystals with caution. The time part however is a bit trickier.


Every single base has a default repair time of 12:00:00. With this we are talking about actual hours, if you spend all your repair time and you're stuck at 0:00:00, you have to wait 12 hours before you have the 100% Repair Time again. If you use Play4Free Funds to buy extra Repair Time, this also means that you have to wait the actual hours before you start to notice the additional Repair Time. For example, if you're logging in in the morning and your Repair Time is 12:00:00 and you decide to buy +6 hours Repair Time, the timer won't stop at 12:00:00, but will keep going until 18:00:00.


Now, the offensive buildings, Barracks, Airfield and Factory, are connected directly to Repair Time. What the game does, is the pick the highest Repair Time (dominating Repair Time), and use that as the Repair Time after a total defeat. This sounds hard to understand, but let's clarify it with an example.


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As you can see, the dominating Repair Time is Airfield, since 2:29:33 hours is more than 1:57:42 hours. This means, that if the attack would result in a total Defeat, Repair Time would be 2:29:33 hours.


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This attack was a total defeat, and the total Repair Cost was 2:39:31 hours. There's 2 seconds difference between the time Airfield stated and the one that the Repair screen stated, which is very likely to be a small bug in the game.


Now that we know the link between offensive buildings and actual Repair Time, it's important to understand how units affect the Repair Time. If we go back to the very basics; there are three types of units: Aircraft, Vehicle and Infantry. The units in the game vary from 5, 10 or 15 Army points. Those units with 15 army points are stronger (they deal more damage/have more health), cost more Crystals/Power to upgrade and will increase your Repair Time. Now in most cases ''increase'' is a good word, however not in this case. If Repair Time would increase, it means that you need to spend more hours on repairing that particular vehicle, which can be the difference between having another attack with a 100% repaired army, or having another attack with a 90% repaired army. Some units will increase your repair time more than others. The units can be sorted in different tiers.


Tier 1 - 5 Army points
  • Rifleman Squad / Militants
  • Missle Squad / Militant Rocket Squads
  • Zone Trooper / N/A
  • N/A / Attack Bike


Tier 2 - 10 Army Points
  • Guardian / Reckoner
  • Pitbull / Specter
  • Sniper / Confessor
  • Paladin / Cobra
  • Predator / Scorpion
  • Firehawk / Vertigo
  • Commando / Commando
  • Venom / Orca
  • N/A / Black Hand


Tier 3 - 15 Army Points
  • Juggernaut / N/A
  • Mammoth / Avatar
  • Kodiak / Salamander


Now, all units have different Repair Times, and we now know it's important to keep your offensive buildings on around the same Repair Time. Because there are so many units, it's very important to mix your army. Mixing is using every single kind of unit (have Infantry, Vehicles and Aircraft in your army). Mixing up not only the kind of units, but also the tiers of the units. For example, a simple Forgotten Rifleman squad can be killed by 4 specific anti-infantry units: Guardian/Reckoner, Orca/Venom, Rifleman Squad/Militants and Sniper Team/Confessor. This means that there are always different kinds of units for every single opponent. Keep this in mind and you'll be able to find a good mixed army, to keep the Repair Time as low as possible. Low repair time means more attacks you can do. With 12 hours of Repair Time, and a dominating Repair Time of 3 hours, will give you 12/3 = 4 100% attacks. If you're having a dominating Repair Time of 4 hours, it will be 12/4 = 3 100% attacks. There's a big difference between these, and it's important to manage it properly to get the most efficient army.


Picking your army carefully and not going for the highest firepower will help you in the long run, because 1 attack with high a firepower army will give less Research Points than 2 attacks with a slightly less firepower army. The understanding of Repair Time is important for the game and your own career, since army is everything. Choices are important, and insight of mechanics is essential. So now it's up to you; are you running over the whole shed or infiltrating from the inside?