Gunship Battle Total Warfare is an MMO strategy game developed by Joycity Corp. where climate change has resulted in a global rise in sea level, drowning much of the Earth’s land and leaving isolated islands in its wake. Amidst the chaos, a terrorist group known as the New World Armada has been making themselves known, claiming to have access to a stockpile of nuclear weapons just as the nations of the world hold a denuclearization summit.
You play as an Admiral in charge of a small naval fleet trying to evade Armada forces, finding an abandoned base to serve as a makeshift headquarters. Over time, you build up your base capabilities and take the fight to the Armada, or other Admirals if you desire.
Gunship Battle has you building up your troops and scouting nearby islands, preparing for the works while planning attacks of your own. You start off dealing with simple Armada patrols but gradually make your way up to the toughest strongholds, besieging them for various rewards. The crown jewel of your fleet is the aircraft carrier, allowing you to move and maintain your army a greater distance away from your base.
However, be warned as the aircraft carrier is just as vulnerable to attacks as the rest of your fleet, and an unattended base is ripe for assault unless you have a peace shield up. If you think you cannot handle the threats of the ocean alone, you can join an alliance for protection, or perhaps collaborate with other players for taking on other alliances for glory.
Gunship Battle’s gameplay is familiar to a lot of players, but for those new to the genre, it can get a bit daunting with how many things you have to manage to keep your forces in top shape. This guide will help new players learn and understand what they are getting into before they face the worst. Stay with us and learn what Gunship Battle Total Warfare has in store!
1. Base Orientation
As is typical of strategy games of this mold, Gunship Battle automatically assigns you to a server after starting the game and letting the intro play out. While evading the Armada, your forces find refuge in an island that is home to a military base and find it a good spot to resupply and reinforce. Here the tutorial begins, with your progress displayed at the lower left corner of the screen just above the navigation buttons.
Your first order of business will be collecting resources. There are four resources for you to manage and gather: Food, Steel, Oil, and Silver. The farms and mines of your base are located near the mining machine at the upper left corner of your base.
For the time being, you will only have a farm to produce Food and a Steel mill. You have to unlock the buildings to produce Oil and Silver and this will require you to upgrade your Headquarters. You can augment your resource gathering by sending fleets out to plunder Armada-controlled islands and the bases of other Admirals.
We will get the different buildings of your base out of the way early so we can discuss them in depth later:
- Headquarters: This determines the level of your base, and how many times you can upgrade the other buildings in turn.
- Farms: Included for the sake of consistency, the farms are your primary source of resources outside of gathering them from other islands. Upgrading the farms simply increases the rate they generate resources for you to collect, and upgrading your Headquarters lets you build new farms.
- Jet Factory: This is where Jets are built to bolster your forces, in exchange for resources and duplicate blueprints of the selected Jet. After a selected Jet is constructed, it must be claimed before a new one can be built.
- Hangar: This building holds all Jets that are ready for a mission, assembled into a squadron. There is an upper limit to how many Jets can be in the squadron, with any extra Jets transferred to the CSG Reserves. Upgrading the Hangar at certain levels lets you add more Jets to your squadron, though there is a hard cap.
- Shipyard: Whereas aircraft require two buildings to build and store new Jets, the Shipyard handles both construction and storage, with assigned ships selectable from the docks nearby. While the Shipyard still uses blueprints to build new ships, leveling them up requires Ship XP, acquired from attacking Armada fleets and bases. Just like the hangar, you can only have so many ships assigned to combat duty until you upgrade your shipyard, and a newly-built ship must be claimed before a new one can be commissioned.
- Armory: The Armory is where your ground vehicles are built, which contribute mainly during assaults on Armada-held bases or the bases of other Admirals. Upgrading the Armory lets you build more ground vehicles at once.
- Workshop: Whereas the Armory builds your ground vehicles, the Workshop repairs and maintains them. Upgrading the Workshop increases the number of vehicles that can be repaired at once.
- Commissary: The Commissary keeps your ground forces fed and ready for a fight, consuming some food regularly. If there is not enough food, your troops will be saddled with a harsh attack penalty until enough food can be gathered. Upgrading the Commissary not only decreases the rate of food consumption but also increases the number of ground vehicles you can send to an attack.
- Radar: The Radar detects incoming attackers, and lets you scout out Armada patrols or hostile bases by sending out your fleet.
- Depot: The Depot controls how many resources you can stockpile at once and protects a percentage of resources from being pillaged from successful attacks. Upgrading the Depot increases both the resource cap and the percentage protected from pillages.
- CSG Reserves: Excess aircraft and ships are stored here, along with any damaged ground vehicles awaiting repairs. Upgrading the Reserves lets you store more ships and planes, which comes in handy as you construct better ones. You cannot swap ships and planes around if your current fleet is off doing tasks.
- Research Labs: The Research Labs let you study topics to improve the strength of your forces. This can include simple buffs to stats, unlocking new ship types, or upgrading the logistics of your base. Upgrading the Labs unlocks more topics and technologies to research.
- Embassy: Used mainly for interaction with alliance members, the Embassy controls how many times you can request assistance from other Admirals in the alliance, as well as how many times you can send assistance.
2. Reclaiming the Skies and Seas
All buildable aircraft and ships in Gunship Battle have stats that determine their effectiveness in combat, namely how they perform against other aircraft, other ships, and other ground vehicles. When building a vehicle for the first time, a brief animation will play to show it off, along with a brief description of what it specializes in in battle.
You can get more detailed aircraft information by heading to the Hangar and selecting the Manage option, letting you view the stats of already built aircraft. These stats can include how well they perform against enemy assets, their chance to evade attacks in turn, and so on. You can also upgrade your built planes with blueprints as mentioned before, improving their stats and unlocking additional abilities at certain levels.
One of the more important aircraft stats listed is Operational Range, which limits how far your planes can travel away from your base, listed in kilometers. While this might sound counter-intuitive in a game like this, you do get an aircraft carrier that can serve as a staging ground for your air force, providing much-needed firepower to your navy. All jets, ships, and ground vehicles have rarities, with rarer vehicles coming with greater stats but are naturally much harder to find and upgrade.
Your advisor Olivia recommends that you start building up your forces to fend off any attacks from the Armada or other Admirals. While all new accounts start with a peace shield to deter attacks from other Admirals, it will not last forever. The first thing the game recommends you build is a jet, namely the F18 Hornet.
To build jets, you need to collect enough blueprints and spend them along with the required resources to queue them up for construction. Blueprints are collected by attacking Armada fleets on the world map, and they are also used to upgrade preexisting jets in your forces. Thus, you have to decide between building new airplanes or upgrading preexisting ones, especially if the game is not being kind with blueprint drops.
After your first jet is built, a fight against a small Armada squadron commences, and they are quickly driven off by your meager forces. Dogfights are purely cinematic, utilizing the power difference between squadrons to determine the winner.
After the Armada squadron has been defeated, Olivia suggests that you start building up your naval fleet to better explore the surrounding waters. Aside from squaring off against enemy fleets, your ships can also be sent to Armada-held resource islands, providing an alternative to your farms when it comes to stockpiling supplies. Since these islands are protected by the enemy, your ships will have to duke it out before they can collect.
Gathering resources from these islands will take time, and your ships can only carry so many resources at once before they return to base. Your ships can also pillage resources by attacking the bases of other Admirals, but so can the fleets of other Admirals.
There are three types of ships you can build: Frigates, Destroyers, and Submarines. The ships interact in a rock-paper-scissors fashion, with Frigates beating Submarines, Submarines beating Destroyers, and Destroyers beating Frigates. Instead of collecting blueprints from Armada fleets, new ship models are unlocked by researching them at the Research Labs, with Olivia’s guidance unlocking the Knox-class Frigate for construction and use.
Additionally, ships gain experience through their battles, though you can speed up this process by finding Ship XP items, which provide an instant experience boost. Ships can only level up five times before they have to be limit broken, which will not be accessible to new Admirals until much later. Instead of unlocking new abilities every level up, ships acquire trait points which are then used to select and upgrade perks for customization. Perks are split into two categories: Attack and Intel.
Attack perks are focused on simply increasing the damage output of your selected ship, while Intel perks buff supplemental stats like critical hit chance and evasion. Perks also exist to improve the efficiency of collecting resources, either by increasing the speed at which resources are gathered or increasing the number of resources they can hold, allowing you to organize your ships as you see fit.
Instead of a cinematic, naval battles are a turn-based affair where all involved ships take turns in launching attacks and hoping they survive the returning salvo. Ships have abilities that let them perform different attacks or evade enemy fire.
Frigates for example can either use their guns to open fire on any ships or launch a torpedo to deal with any submarines currently submerged in the water. If your navy is backed up with your jet squadron, they will initiate a bombing run as soon as the fight begins, softening up the enemy if not destroying them outright.
3. A Floating Fortress
While launching attacks from your base is possible, the operational range of your aircraft means that a full-on assault will be lacking in firepower. To counteract this, the tutorial lets you build your first aircraft carrier, a Charles de Gaulle. Aircraft carriers act as mobile bases that can ferry aircraft and ground vehicles alike while being escorted by your navy.
This allows you to bring the full weight of your military against enemy bases and fleets. First, you have to assemble your aircraft carrier by constructing key components, some of which will require the assembly of ground vehicles.
Ground vehicles, or Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFVs), will serve as your main means of attacking base defenses, seeing as your ships are confined to water and you can only have so many jets in your squadron. As mentioned before, your ground vehicles are built at the armory, and there are three classes of ground vehicles to build and maintain:
- Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) are transports for your soldiers and have an even balance between durability and damage output.
- Main Battle Tanks (MBTs), despite their main guns, are designed to soak up incoming fire at the cost of damage.
- Self-propelled Guns (SPGs) typically consist of mobile artillery and tank destroyers. These emphasize offense over durability.
Ground vehicles cannot be directed in any form of combat, behaving the same way as aircraft. It is largely a matter of balancing out your composition of AFVs and making sure your troops are well-supported by the rest of your personnel. If nothing else, overwhelming the enemy with sheer power difference is doable, though this is affected mainly by the quality of your selected AFVs.
Your aircraft carrier can repair any damaged aircraft while your forces are on the move, though the aircraft carrier itself is vulnerable to attack if you deploy it. If it takes too much damage, it will be sent back to your base and undergo repairs, impairing your offense until it is brought back to working order.
Aircraft carriers have their dedicated port near the hangar, where you can purchase modules that provide buffs to certain ship types. Aircraft carriers are upgraded similarly to jets by locating enough duplicate blueprints, but the resource requirements are much higher, and new Admirals will not have to worry about upgrading their first aircraft carrier for a long time.
Upgrading the aircraft carrier port improves the speed of installing upgrades and repairing damage, and with sufficient port upgrades, you will be able to field a whole fleet of aircraft carriers, reserved for the hardest challenges you can face in Gunship Battle.
There are upper limits to how many times you can launch attacks, however. Attacking the Armada costs Stamina while attacking other Admirals costs Battle Points. Both naturally regenerate over time, but you generally have more Stamina than you have Battle Points.
Stamina is consumed by the listed amount before committing an attack, but Battle Points are consumed based on the level difference between Admirals. Running out of Stamina prevents you from attacking other Armada forces outright, and while you can still attack other Admirals after running out of Battle Points, you can no longer gain any resources from doing so until enough Battle Points have regenerated.
4. Keeping Your Friends Close
Being an MMO, Gunship Battle lets you interact with other Admirals, typically with the intent of raiding their bases for resources and expecting the same in return. Gunship Battle also lets you join alliances or found one of your own, either for socialization or for planning large-scale attacks across your server. Before we discuss the alliance system in depth, we will talk about the equipment you can use for army-wide buffs.
To manage equipment, you first select the Admiral icon at the upper left corner of the screen, just below your resource caps. Beneath the currently selected avatar is bars denoting the current experience level of your account, along with your current Stamina and Battle Point values, and below that are equipment slots.
There are six slots in total, each accepting a certain type of equipment as denoted in the icon. You can craft your equipment after sufficiently upgrading your headquarters, but in-game events can reward you with some free equipment fairly easily, well before you get to that point. Equipment can tip the scales of battle in your favor by a tiny bit, but for the most part, it is a matter of making sure your forces are well-prepared.
Alliance interaction is managed by the Embassy, which lets you send requests for assistance and respond to the requests of other Admirals. Being in an Alliance not only gives you some protection against other Admirals compared to playing alone, but it also lets you participate in events where various Alliances duke it out for prizes. Even outside of events, some Armada strongholds may require multiple players to work in concert to successfully crack them open.
The biggest challenge any Alliance can deal with is the Conquest of a Base of Operations, a massive Armada complex that opens sporadically for the three strongest Alliances in the server to try and conquer. Whoever manages to claim the base gets to lead the charge in a World War, where entire servers invade one another.
Whoever wins the War gets to tax the losers for some time, earning a cut of resources produced until the tax period concludes. After the War, the Base of Operations reverts to Armada control and is locked up until the next World War is at hand.
5. Navy Management for Skippers
Now that we have the basics of Gunship Battle Total Warfare out of the way, we can discuss some tips to avoid becoming an easy experience for other Admirals:
- Food, Food, Food: While most of your resources stay static unless an enemy Admiral manages to besiege your base, Food is regularly deducted to keep your soldiers satiated. Keep an eye out on your food stocks and plunder any Armada bases dedicated to food production as needed. The last thing you want is a hungry army that cannot attack as effectively as before.
- Keep your scientists busy: Research unlocks new ship types and models, and the tech tree also includes small but repeatable buffs for things like resource production and the speed of repairs. This way you can keep your army in top shape. Just remember that normally you can only research one topic at a time, so choose wisely.
- The appropriate amount of force: Launching your aircraft carrier is nice and all, but sometimes just sending out your navy is sufficient for certain tasks. Nabbing some extra resources from that nearby Armada base is a good example, as bringing the full weight of your military to bear can be too much, especially if the power difference is great. Sending your aircraft carrier out also makes it vulnerable to opportunistic Admirals who can attack it, and even if it is not completely wrecked, it may need to sit out a future excursion for repairs.
- Scout it out: If you are planning to launch an attack, but you are also not confident of the odds of victory, send out a scouting party. They will come back with words fairly quickly and it can help you decide whether to continue with the attack or find someone else to take on.
- Admirals can get tired too: Remember, Stamina and Battle Points limit the number of times your forces can go on battles before you need to take a breather. If you are in an Alliance that prefers PvP, insufficient battle points can result in you missing out on the spoils of war.
And that concludes our beginner’s guide to Gunship Battle Total Warfare. If you have any secrets and tips to share with us, please let us know in the comments below!