Battle Pirates becomes quite intricate later on, and deciding what to upgrade first will be a major decision. Many upgrades take more than a day, some of them take two weeks, but before you get there you gotta learn what each building does and why they are important.
Welcome to Battle Pirates 101.
The Outpost: Use the outpost to rename yourself, and to relocate yourself near a friend. Upgrade your outpost to allow more terrain blocks and higher level warehouses.
Warehouse: Upgrade a warehouse to increase your total storage capacity of the 4 resources you need. Upgrade them to the highest level possible as soon as possible. They are fast upgrades and are well worth the time.
Naval Lab: Upgrade your Ship Armor and different Ship hulls here.
Weapons Lab: Upgrade your ship weapons, base turret weapons and rockets here.
Advanced Lab: Upgrade your specials here, used for gaining extra ship speed, missile range, splash damage and such.
Academy: Upgrading Academy allows you to use more than one fleet at a time. Maximum of 10.
Dock: You can use 5 ships in each of your fleets. Upgrade your dock to allow more total weight in each of your fleets.
Rocket Platform: During battle you can launch rockets at the enemy to do damage or stun the ships. Upgrade the platform to use larger rockets, research them in the Weapons Lab
Intelligence Lab: Track the progress of your Draconian Tech blueprints and Raid event prizes here. Upgrade to use stronger items. Attack different level salvages to gather blueprints to use.
Great Hall: Invite new players to Battle Pirates and assign them to tasks in the Great Hall to get a reductions in research time and extra map speed for your fleets.
Shipyard: Manufacture new ships here. Eventually you'll be able to upgrade it for easier ship building.
Resource Production: Oil Platform, Metal Foundry, Zynthium Refinery, Wind Turbine. Upgrade your outpost to build more of each type. Upgrading them past level 4 is a waste of time in the beginning.
Resource Gathering: Attacking Draconian Fleets (salvage) and Mining at nearby Drac fields is the primary way to gain more resources. You can also attack players that are mining, and collect what they've mined. Expect retaliation.
Hitting Bases: You can attack player bases that are within 5 levels above and below your base level, and your fleet will be able to carry 500% normal cargo capacity. Destroying their Outpost and Warehouses give you the most resources. Expect retaliation.
Damage Protection: If you get attacked you can get protection in the form of a 'bubble' over your base. The semi-circular dome represents your base invincibility to attack. Your fleets are still vulnerable to attack and if you attack a base while you have a bubble your bubble disappears.
If you take 25% damage you get a bubble for 18 hours. If you get attacked 4 times within a short time, you get a 1 hour bubble. If you get attacked 10 times in one day you'll get a 48 hour bubble. If your base is destroyed (cratered) you can get a 36 hour bubble. Your bubble is a tool, use it well.
Your Sector: The map is divided into sectors, each sector is 600 x 600 squares and only those within your sector can read your chats. Many sectors only attack adjacent sectors, seeing them as the enemy outside.
Alliances: Most sectors have alliances of players that have agreed to not attack each other and will defend one another from other players. There is no in-game alliance system, so player alliances often use facebook group chats to communicate.
Raid Events: There will occasionally be raid events in game, and there are worthwhile prizes to those players that compete and win. There are several ship hulls and game items that are only available to raid winners and players that scored high enough in each past raid. Some of those items have also become available to non-participants at a later date. Expect repair times to be halved, and salvage spawns to be a lot faster.
Beginner Strategy:
Take a look at your mission button, on the left side of the screen. Complete as many missions as you can until they are no longer easy to accomplish.
Priorities... you'll need battle barges and outpost4 as soon as possible. To do that you'll want to build 4 marauders, then send your 5 marauder fleet to nearby low level bases. Many will be empty, some will be storing resources for you to take. Hit the warehouses, and outpost if you can.
During your missions you'll upgrade several small items that will be useful, including Thud Cannon. Putting thud cannons on marauders is the easiest way to get started. If you build a ship to have less than 300 total hit points (armor) then it will repair in less than 5 minutes (instarepair). Five instarepair thud marauders will help kickstart your production.
Upgrade everything that is less than a day build as soon as possible.
Always have something researching in every possible building. Never let your shipyard, weapons lab, naval lab, or advanced lab sit idle. Cue the short upgrades when you have time to sit there, and cue long ones while you sleep or before work/school. This will give you a sharp edge on the competition.
Attack some salvages (draconian fleets). Thud marauders can take out level 4 salvage without too much problem. This is a good way to be a self sufficient pirate, to keep your researches moving. Ask people in your sector to open larger salvages near you. Some will help you, some will harass you.
With a fleet of barges you can carry over half a million resources at a time and easily kill level 5 salvage. With a level 4 outpost you can create a base layout that will stop most pirates from easily looting you. I would recommend not even worrying about base defense until you are level 22. Gather, Upgrade, and stay bubbled for protection.
Mining is an option but your fleets can be attacked and you'll waste a lot of time repairing them later.
In other tutorials, I will discuss specific ship builds, piloting strategies and other tricks of the trade. Battle Pirates is what you make of it. Make it fun!
