Special Operations

Special Operations activities are accessed through your Chinook, and serve as an important part of the beginning levels of the game. Special Operations are broken into four main areas:

In addition, there are a couple of periodic events that are accessed through Special Operations, including:

Daily Test
War Machine
AMS Rush

The Special Operations arena resembles the floors of a house, with each room representing a section of the house. When you start the game as a beginner, almost all of the house is hidden, and you must explore it to reveal what is in each room. Exploring costs plastic to unlock each section.

As you reveal more and more of the room, new Strongholds and Supply Points appear for you to conquer. Strongholds are represented by yellow, grey, or green towers in the house. They are labeled by a name (which is mostly irrelevant - it does signify the contents of the Stronghold, but they are all pretty much similar), and the name is preceded by a number representing the level of the Stronghold. The level is more important, as it tells you the relative strength of the enemy fortifications you must defeat to conquer the Stronghold.

Also revealed are enemy Supply Points, which are stations that can be secured by players on your Special Operations battlefield. Only one player can hold each one at a time, and controlling a Supply Point gives you rewards that can be collected periodically. Only the player who holds that position gets the rewards, and players can continue to battle for a Supply Point, trading it back and forth until one player gives up.

Most battles in Special Operations involve the Stage Skills of your Officers, and do not use the troops that you create in your Command Center. Instead, each chosen officer assembles troops according to their Stage Unit Type, only the troops of the selected officers wage battle against stationary enemy weapons.

To begin an assault on an enemy Stronghold, click on the Stronghold and then the attack button. You can also Scout the Stronghold, which allows you to see the enemy fortifications it holds without actually launching an attack. There is no penalty for losing an attack (except for your wasted time), so it doesn't hurt to simply give it a try. You will be taken to a screen that allows you to select which Officers you choose to wage your battle, and each Officer displays the Stage Skill they can use during battle.

The number of officers you may select is dependent upon the level of your Chinook building:

Chinook Level	Officer Slots Available
1-2	2
3-5	3
6-8	4
9-13	5
14-19	6
20-24	7
25-30	8

Choosing which Officers you wish to send is pretty important. You would prefer to use your highest level Officers, as their troops have the most strength in battle. You also want to chose the Offices with the most useful Stage Skills, and you usually prefer not to double up on Officers with the same stage skill (in the picture above both Bull and Angel Alyssa have the Healing Kit Stage Skill). Generally speaking (there are exceptions) having multiple officers with the same Stage Skill does not benefit you, since their Stage Skill power does not stack. The effectiveness of an Officer's Stage Skill is determined by the Officer's Skill Level, so you prefer to use Officers that have both high Level (which controls how much damage the troops can sustain, and how much damage they can dish out) and high Skill Level (which determines the power of their Stage Skill).

This is where Wendy really shines. Her Divine Halberd attack does massive damage to the entire enemy field. If the Skill Level of Wendy is high enough, you can wipe out the whole field without even deploying a single troop. Divine Halberd also clears the entire field of mines, resulting in less damage to your attacking troops. Using that skill gets pretty expensive (in Counterattack Energy), as the cost increases with each use (as do all the skills).

Useful Counterattack skills:

Vulcan Missile		Deals damage to enemy targets within a small area.
Healing Kit		Heals damage done to your troops within a circle range for a small period of time.
Cannonballs		Drops three bombs, dealing damage to enemies within a small area.
Smoke Strike		Releases smoke in the target area, dealing damage and incapacitating the targets within that area for 3.5 seconds. The stun effect of this skill helps you kill off the enemy weapons without taking damage yourself. Some enemy weapons can do lots of damage to you at long range, so stunning them until you can reach them and do your own damage is helpful. You can also clear a couple of mines using this skill.
Glue Bomb		This skill stuns the targets in a small area, but does so for longer than Smoke Strike.

Once you launch your attack, the battle takes place on the orange cushion of a couch which represents your battlefield for the skirmish.

Once the round of battle starts you have 5 minutes to destroy the enemy HQ (the cylinder-shaped fortification) to win. The remaining time is shown in the count-down timer at the top of the screen. If your troops are killed off, or if you are unable to destroy the HQ within 5 minutes you lose the battle. Losing a Special Operations battle has essentially no consequence - you don't lose troops or experience any other type of penalty other than your lost time.

In the lower left corner are your selected officers. You may click on them and then click in the launch pads (the areas marked by a dashed white line and an arrow) to deploy their troops. In the lower right corner are your available stage skills. Click on them, then tap in the battlefield area to deploy that weapon or effect.

Using a stage skill requires energy. Your available energy is shown in the small rectangle above your stage skill icons, with a blue cube and white numbering. You start out with a set amount of energy at the beginning of each battle. The amount of energy you start with is modified by a number of things, but it primarily depends on the skill level of your selected officers. Each officer contributes a given amount of energy. Each time you use a stage skill it consumes some of that energy. In addition, the amount of energy consumed by a stage skill use increases each time you use that skill. For instance, in the graphic above, it costs 15 energy to use Vulcan Missile once. After its' first use, it will cost 25 energy to use, then 35, and so on. Energy can be gained by destroying enemy fortifications, and some robots also introduce a periodic, small increase in energy.

You also get one stage skill automatically every battle, no matter what officers you choose - it's the green target icon (skill name unknown) that is described as: "Guides units to the target location". It allows you to place a target flag on the battlefield map, and your troops will head in that direction instead of automatically heading towards the nearest enemy target. You can also select an enemy fortification and all of your troops will move to attack that weapon either until it is destroyed, or the skill timer runs out.

Weapon	Range	Shots/s	Area
Cannon	long	0.2	1
Howitzer	med	0.333	1
Bunker	med	constant	1
Mortar	long	0.2	6
Watchtower	long	0.5	1
Flamethrower	short	1	1
Missile Launcher	very long	3	1

Weapon	Lvl	HP	D/s	Lvl	HP	D/s	Lvl	HP	D/s	Lvl	HP	D/s	Lvl	HP	D/s	Lvl	HP	D/s
Cannon	30	72000	6115	14	12085	898	13	10986	816	10	8254	613	3	4235	315	1	3500	260
Howitzer	30	28450	2385	20	9900	764	18	8400	632	8	3600	244	7	3300	221
Bunker	30	22700	2750	20	7900	880	13	5700	600	14	4800	500
Mortar	30	28400	247	20	9900	80	15	6500	49	8	3600	25
Watchtower	30	24500	764	18	7100	201	15	5500	151	13	4700	125	11	4000	103	10	3600	93
Flamethrower				20	11500	220	17	8900	164	15	7500	136	12	5800	100
Missile Launcher	30	76000	421	13	11800	54	8	7500	34	5	5700	25

Strategy

Here is my go-to officer lineup for Special Operations battles:

Officer	Unit Type	Stage Skill	Notes
Flora-X	Commando	Cluster Shells	Selected because she's strong (I have her maxed), and for troop diversity. Cluster Shells can be useful in AMS Rush to quickly reach distant enemy officers, but other than that it's not that useful to me.
Wendy	Vehicle	Divine Halberd	We need a vehicle type to act as a shield to protect the other, weaker troops, and Divine Halberd is extremely useful for clearing mines and other fortifications across the board.
Mighty Alice	Copter	Soldier Charge	Selected to load up on copters. Stage skill isn't particularly useful.
Angel Alyssa	Copter	Healing Kit	Another copter troop, and Healing Kit is always useful.
Witch	Copter	Rapid Fire	More copters, but more importantly it's my favorite stage skill: Rapid Fire. This skill increases the damage they do, and when maxed lasts for 13 seconds. When coupled with Bunny Girl, and they are both of the same level, both officers activate with one tap, so you get double the impact with the same energy usage.
Sally	Copter	Cluster Missiles	More copters. Cluster Missiles isn't particularly useful, but can be used to clear distant fortifications that do long range damage, like mortars or missile launchers.
Bunny Girl	Copter	Rapid Fire	Rapid Fire again - makes your attack incredibly powerful. When coupled with Witch, and they are both of the same level, both officers activate with one tap, so you get double the impact with the same energy usage.
Forest Elder	Commando	Challenge Flag	Commandos for troop diversity, but Challenge Flag is my second favorite skill. Deploy two Challenge Flags across the front of the enemy battle line and it essentially renders them useless. You can pick them off easily while they do no damage to you - lasts 9 seconds per activation.

Couple this all with my preferred Robot for Special Operations: Terminator. The higher power you can get your Terminator, the better. Once you are able to convert it twice, you get Wrath of Fury, which increases all units' damage by 20% during stage battles, and you get Energy Efficiency, which improves your energy utilization rate for stage skills by 20%. Next activate its' Exclusive Weapons. The most important Exclusive Weapon for Special Operations is Fearless Charge 3. For Terminator, its' Fearless Charge increases the damage of copter-type officers during stages.