There are very few tactics in arena. It seems like the game starts, a couple ships appear and then suddenly both sides drop their entire fleets in a massive scrum. There are no advantages from attacking from on the flanks.
It would be great if the players started from opposite sides with a buffer zone in the center. It would also be good if there were obstacles, like planets or asteroids, so you have to think about the right paths to your opponent.
Tips for winning: 1. Save before every battle. 2. Get the Vigari, shenzen and mikebeth. 3. Don't group ships, move the individually or they bump into each other and do strange turns. 4. Pick a corner farthest from the incoming ships and move your ships there. 5. create a line to protect the shenzen and mikebeth. 6. Armor is location specific. if it drops to zero then there is a clear shot to your hull. It doesn't matter what the rest of your armor is like, it only matters if your hull is taking hits. 7. Turn the ships so that the damaged armor is not facing the incoming ships. 8. Use the scope view to move your fleet, then switch to normal view to watch the armor damage. 9. Fast enemy ships far outrun the big ships, let them come to you and the shenzen and mikebeth with destroy them. 10. Remember to move your ships off the front line. 11. If you lose a ship, restore from your last save and replay the mission.
Have fun!
It could be such a great version of Risk, but its buggy where sometimes it subtracts the number of armies you are "adding" to a country at the beginning of a turn. Sometimes during a battle it will say it is subtracting 1 army, but it will really subtract 4 or 5 or 16. The balance issues just make it slow going.
Its a really fun game that could be more addictive. The only problem is that you go through 27 rounds of what could be best described as tutorial play every time you play the game. That's great if the goal is to learn how to play with finesse. However, I've played those rounds several times and I would rather jump to the final round after having customized my asteroid.
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We are going to be pausing the arena after the current weekly tournament and taking things back to the drawing board.