DrugWars Strategy: Training and The Research Center

A few updates back, the DrugWars team rolled out a new building that unlocked a whole plethora of options for upgrading and enhancing your army: The Research Center.

The Research Center is a phenomenal addition to the game for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it allows players to tweak their playing styles to their own liking. Prior to the Research Center coming online, everybody's troops did the same amount of damage and had the same amount of armor. Now it's a whole different story, and a few points invested in a few key areas can make a massive difference in how battles play out.

Obviously for long-time players who have resources by the truckload, it's relatively easy to dive straight into the Research Center and invest in everything, especially because the early tiers are so inexpensive. But for new players who don't have a ton of surplus Drugs, Weapons, and Alcohol, deciding what to invest in and how much to invest in it is a major decision. My goal in this post is to take some of the guesswork out of the various research options available under the Training tab in your Bootcamp, explain how they work, and give the reader an idea of the best bang for their resource bucks. Let's get started!

• Routing: Think of this like a GPS for your troops, allowing them to get from Point A to Point B faster. Every point invested in Routing cuts their Speed down by half a percent. This makes the biggest difference to slower units like Big Mamas, Snipers, and Bazooka Guys, but even speedier units like Spies and Ninjas get a boost.

• Close Combat: Pretty much what the description says. Every point invested in Close Combat boosts the attack power of your non-ranged units by 1%. Despite it specifying 'physical damage', this applies to all melee units regardless of what type of damage they dish out.

• Introduction to Pistol Rifle & Shotgun: Just like Close Combat, only for people packing hardware. All of your ranged units get a 1% boost to their attack power for every level invested in this skill. Despite the skill specifying 'physical damage', it actually applies to all ranged units regardless of what damage type they inflict.

• Information Procurement: The description states that this skill helps remove the fog of war. It's unclear what this actually translates to, but it seems to apply to Spies and their ability to find information out about your target.

• Sniper Trains: Another 'what it says on the tin' options. Your Snipers enjoy a 1% boost to damage for every level placed into this skill. This synergizes with the Sniper's built-in ability to increase their damage outputs on subsequent rounds, providing the boost every time they attack, and it stacks with other training that boosts ranged attackers.

• Spirit Wine: Again, another 'obvious skill is obvious' piece. Every level of Spirit Wine boosts the damage output of your Hobos by 1%. This doesn't keep them from dying after that first punch, but it stacks with other training which boosts melee attackers.

• Coordination: This is probably the most complicated skill in the game. If you use the battle simulator, you can see three values: Supply, Power, and Size. Coordination affects the 'Power' value, and it works a little something like this. When you attack or you are attacked, the game takes a look at how many different troops are available on each side, and how many different groups are participating in the attack. If you're the attacker, this is how many troops you committed to the battle; if you're the defender, this is the entirety of your army. The larger the size of your force, and the more variety among the units, the more of a 'penalty' the game assigns to the damage output of each of those units to represent the chaos of the battlefield.

The way this penalty works is that the game tallies up the damage output of each individual troop (accounting for all the boosts it receives from the various training you've invested in), then multiplies that damage output by the 'Power' rating shown in the simulator. For small numbers of troops, or attacks that only use one or two overall groupings of soldiers, the change is negligible. But when you get into large-scale gang wars where both sides are hurling thousands of units spread across multiple groups at one another, the effect is magnified. Because of this, it can actually take longer for the fight to resolve as one or both sides do decreased damage to one another every round. Coordination works to offset this penalty by bolstering unit cohesion by 1% per level of research. In practice, this translates to around a 0.01 increase on the 'Power' value per level, but even that can vary based on how many units are involved in a particular conflict.

• Chemical Training: After the mind-bender of Coordination, it's nice to get back to the basics. Chemical Training pumps the damage output on all your troops that attack using Chemical-type damage at a rate of 1% per level. Easy-peasy.

• Weapon Master: Similar to Chemical training, this boosts the Weapon-type damage of your troops by 1% per level. This only applies to units that have the symbol for bullets on their offensive type -- melee, fire, or chemical attackers don't get this bonus.

• Fire Training: Like the previous two skills, only for Fire-based attackers. Again, a 1% boost per level. Simple.

• Protection: Protection raises the defense value of all your soldiers by half a percent per level, which seems pretty powerful, but there's a little caveat: the boost in armor applies only to the physical defense value. Bullet, Fire, and Chemical defense values are unchanged.

• Bomb Construction: Applying only to the Bazooka Guy, every level of this skill increases his damage output by 1%, making for bigger booms on the battlefield.

• Psychological Training: Each level of research here boosts the damage and physical defense (not chemical, fire, or bullet) of your Elite troops by half a percent. Only troops with the 'Elite' designation in the Boot Camp screen get the benefit of this; everybody else is out of luck.

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That's a lot of info to digest, and much of it (with the exception of Coordination) is quite obvious. Let's do some further breakdowns and get a better idea of the value of each skill based on how many units it affects. So, from most to least, here's how the various skills affect your soldiers:

Routing and Coordination - 13 out of 13 units.
Protection - 11.5 out of 13 units (the Hobo and Spy can't defend; the Spy only benefits from this on offense making it worth half a point), but only offsets the damage done by 6 out of 13 units.
Close Combat - 8 out of 13 units.
Introduction to Pistol Rifle & Shotgun - 5 out of 13 units.
Psychological Training - 4 out of 13 units.
Weapon Master - 3 out of 13 units.
Chemical Training and Fire Training - 2 out of 13 units.
Sniper Trains, Spirit Wine, and Bomb Construction - 1 out of 13 units.
Information Procurement - ? out of 13 units (unclear; presumably affects only Spy).

That's all well and good, but it's a chart that doesn't tell the whole story. Let's instead see how many total skills each unit is affected by, because that will give us a better idea on where the best deals are to be found. Going down the Boot Camp list and ignoring Routing and Coordination which affect every unit, here's how it breaks down:

Hobo - 2 (Close Combat & Spirit Wine, only on Offense).
Rowdy - 3 (Close Combat, Weapon Master, and Protection).
Super Bouncer - 2 (Close Combat & Protection).
Big Mama - 3 (Close Combat, Protection, and Psychological Training).
Knifer - 4 (Close Combat, Chemical Training, Protection, and Psychological Training).
Gunman - 3 (Intro to Pistol Rifle & Shotgun, Fire Training, Protection).
Lawyer - 2 (Intro to Pistol Rifle & Shotgun, and Protection).
Spy - 2 partial (Close Combat & Protection, only on Offense).
Sniper - 4 (Intro to Pistol Rifle & Shotgun, Sniper Trains, Weapon Master, and Protection).
Hitman - 5* (Intro to Pistol Rifle & Shotgun, Weapon Master, and Protection, but derives a double benefit from the first two skills because he attacks twice, giving him an effective value of 5).
Ninja - 3 (Close Combat, Protection, and Psychological Training).
Bazooka Guy - 31* (Intro to Pistol Rifle & Shotgun, Fire Training, Bomb Construction, and Protection, but derives a 10x benefit from the first three skills because he hits 10 targets with every shot, giving him an effective value of 31).
Mercenary - 4 (Intro to Pistol Rifle & Shotgun, Chemical Training, Protection, and Psychological Training).

So where do I focus my training efforts?

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Ahhh, the $64,000 question. The answer to this will largely depend on your playing style, specifically how often you attack and what kind of troops you prefer to recruit, but there are some generalities to be gleaned that will be good for everybody no matter what kind of army you're raising. With that in mind, here are my personal top 5 Research Center skills to focus on.

1) Routing

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Unless you're going full turtle mode in your play style, Routing is by far the most beneficial skill to research because it allows you to acquire resources faster. Early in the game, Super Bouncers are your most economical way of carting off resources from other players, but that muscle is offset by a low speed factor, which Routing helps mitigate. The slower soldiers, like Big Mamas and Bazooka Guys, are much more useful on defense than they are on offense, but if you're in a situation where you need lots of crowd control and shielding on an attack, Routing will pay for itself. Your offensive force moves at the speed of their slowest unit, so anything you can do to boost that speed will benefit you in the long run.

2) Introduction to Pistol Rifle & Shotgun

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While it only affects your Mercenary, Bazooka Guy, Hitman, Sniper, and Gunman, these characters dish out the most powerful attacks in the game, making a 1% boost to them worth far more in numerical terms than a 1% boost to anyone else. Also consider that your ranged attackers strike before every non-ranged unit in the game with the exception of the Hobo and Knifer; more damage translates to more casualties among your opponent's forces before they can hit back.

Additionally, the Bazooka Guy and Hitman benefit exponentially more than any other unit from these skills, since the bonus attack damage is added to every attack they make. Unless you're playing some sort of bizarre, Melee-only strategy, this is the best combat-focused skill in the game.

3) Close Combat

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Close Combat powers up the Ninja, Spy, Lawyer, Big Mama, Knifer, Super Bouncer, Rowdy, and Hobo, with the Ninja and Knifer benefiting the most from the skill. That's important because the Ninja and Knifer are two of the most powerful units in the game thanks to their skills, and anything which bolsters their offensive skill pays for itself after a few combats. If you're playing a mostly-defensive game, beefing up Knifers is even more important as a deterrent to large-scale attacks by more predatory players.

4) Psychological Training

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While it only boosts four units, those units are among the most powerful in the game: Big Mama, Knifer, Ninja, and Mercenary. While it's only 0.5% per level, all four units have a high enough offensive power to make even that a worthwhile investment. What's more, the four units it affects already have a considerable amount of physical defense (the Ninja, Mercenary, and Big Mama all have the highest defense values in the game), giving this skill even more bang for your buck.

5) Fire Training / Chemical Training

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It's impossible to choose between these two skills, as they are each powerful for different reasons. First of all, though each one only affects two different units, those units are each some of the most useful in the game. For Fire Training, the damage boost goes to Gunmen and Bazooka Guys. Gunmen are relatively inexpensive compared to other Ranged types, while Bazooka Guys are expensive but hit multiple targets with each of their attacks.

Chemical Training, however, affects Knifers and Mercenaries which, as we have seen before, are two of the most powerful units in the game thanks to either their priority and cost in the case of the Knifer, or their enormous offensive and defensive power in the case of the Merc, and with so many other skill options that synergize with these two unit types, the added boost from Chemical Training is even more potent.

On the mathematical side, there's less overall protection from Fire damage than there is from Chemical damage (a total of 340 Fire resistance among all units vs. 430 Chemical resistance), but among the units who best resist Chemical damage are the Hitman and the Ninja, who because of their unit priority are among the least-likely to be hit with it. The Big Mama, on the other hand, has awesome armor against every damage type, and is more likely to get hit with the bulk of the incoming Fire damage due to her priority.

Honorable Mention - Bomb Construction

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Despite helping only one unit, each point in Bomb Construction actually gets you ten times the results due to how many attacks the Bazooka Guy makes each round. On a purely bang-for-your-buck level, Bomb Construction is, after Routing and Coordination, the best single skill you can research. Unfortunately, since it only applies to one unit, it didn't make the top five, but it still deserves some credit.

How about the not-so-great?

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Glad you asked. There are four skills which, in my opinion, should therefore be the last of your worries. Those are...

1) Information Procurement

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OK, this one should actually be the first of your worries, but I've run this skill up to level 9 and seen no appreciable difference between that and level 1. Maybe in the future investing in this skill may unlock new combat options or change how the game calculates damage, but right now, as far as I can tell, it doesn't do much of anything beyond let your Spies see what your opponent's hiding. Invest in the initial tier, then ignore it for now.

2) Spirit Wine

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The most recent changes to the Hobo unit have nerfed them to the point of uselessness. At a cost of 400 Alcohol and with a 200 attack rating, they were marginally effective. Now, with a cost of 600 alcohol and a 150 attack rating, it takes three of them to drop a single Rowdy, and twenty-three to run down a Bouncer (assuming base levels for all involved). Investing in Spirit Wine is just throwing good Drugs, Weapons, and Alcohol after bad. If you want to boost your Hobo assault force for some reason, let the bonus from Close Combat pump up their attack power along with every other melee fighter in your arsenal. Otherwise, you need multiple levels of Spirit Wine to overcome even a single point put into Protection by your opponent, and that's just abysmal.

3) Protection

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While Protection buys a boost to defense for all your soldiers, the fact it only bolsters physical armor 0.5% per level is a serious problem. Only the weakest-tier melee troops and the Ninja rely on physical damage to kill their targets, but Ninjas do so much damage that you'd have to invest an absurd amount of resources into Protection to counteract it, and chances are the guy with the Ninjas has boosted their Close Combat and Psychological Training enough to offset that investment.

At lower levels, it might be worth putting a couple points into Protection, especially if you're relying on Big Mamas to protect you against swarms of Bouncers helping themselves to your stuff, but the bonus given by Protection is easily overwhelmed by the investment in other offensive skills which allow units to hit harder. Half a percent isn't worth the expense once you get past the first couple of levels.

4) Sniper Trains

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Snipers are still among the least effective troops in the roster. They have 300 less health than Gunmen, do less damage than Gunmen, have worse armor than Gunmen, cost more in total resources than Gunmen, and are less likely to use their special ability than Gunmen. Bolstering their damage by 1% synergizes well with the other skills that boost their damage output, but if you're relying on Snipers to defend your turf then you're doing it wrong.

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Yeah, but, like, that's just your opinion, man...

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Of course it is. I can't give you anyone else's. Look, a lot of your Research investment needs to be based on your own playing style. I'm just looking at this from the standpoint of simple averages and arithmetic. Some strategies are going to work better for certain types of players than others. If you never worry about attacking, or saving time isn't of interest to you, then you can safely ignore Routing. If you aren't fielding a very large army, then Coordination won't be of much use to you. Not very many Elite units? Then you can ignore Psychological Training in favor of something else.

In addition, there's no telling what changes the DrugWars folks are going to make to the game. We're in Early Access here, folks, so anything is possible. Re-balancing the Sniper, for instance, could make Sniper Trains into one of the best buys for your buck. Likewise, nerfing the boost granted by something like Chemical Training, the addition of new combat units to the Boot Camp, or changing the damage type of one or more units could force a re-evaluation.

Ultimately, my overall recommendation to new players would be to ignore the Research Center all together, and focus your resources into upgrading your other buildings and recruiting some low-level troops before worrying about anything else. The bonuses given by Research levels are extremely low, but the benefits multiply the larger your army gets. Until you're pulling down over 100k/day in Drugs, Weapons, and Alcohol, you're better off pretending the Research Center doesn't exist and investing in resource production and storage. You'll fare better in the long run, and build your little corner of the block that much faster. Joining a gang can help, and Legion of Doom has plenty of openings with our buildings at level 3 at the moment, so feel free to apply!

No matter what, I hope you're having fun playing DrugWars, and I hope this guide helps you in your conquests. If you aren't playing and would like to start, here's the link to get you started.

Until next time, stay safe out there!