Getting Started
From Colony 337 Wiki
I have brought a handful of new players to the game, and they all wanted to know, what do I do now?
I will attempt to give some general info to get new players started on the path to greatness.
When you first start, you will be dropped off in a random location on the 100x100 square map. You are also assigned to a random team. You have some stuff in your backpack (aka inventory) that can help you as well.
Starting off at level 1, you have one weapon at your disposal, the claw. The claw is a good weapon, and very handy for many more levels. The down side to level 1 is that your chances of actually hitting something are very low, 15%. So what's a new robot to do?
One of your first tasks should be to start exploring what's around you. The areas are color coded. Each color represents a certain type of area. Different areas have different items available for you to find by searching.
When you look at the game map, you are always located in the center square of the 3x3 grid. Movement occurs when you click any of the 8 surrounding squares, you will move to that square.
You can search any area. Each area has specific items that are desirable, although there are also random pieces of junk that will need to be discarded to make room for good stuff.
Suggestion #1: Roam until you are in a Medical Center. Search that area until you find a pair of crutches. Once you find crutches, your success rate while attacking with your claw increases by 4%.
Suggestion #2: Roam around until you are in a Recreation Center. Search the Recreation Center until you find a set of training wheels. Training wheels increase your success rate by 4%.
Once you have found both upgrades, your success rate moves from 15% to 23%. That's a good upgrade!
Every time your robot moves, it uses one action point (AP). Your AP is limited on a per day basis, so use your turns wisely. AP is consumed searching, moving, attacking, entering or exiting force fields, and sending transmissions.
If you run into another robot who is not a member of your team, you can attack it by choosing your weapon in the pull down menu and clicking on the attack button.
If you find an empty area, you can deploy a force field. Deploying a force field marks that square as belonging to your team. You can also enter a force field which belongs to your team and your robot becomes invisible to other robots outside the force field. To move your robot you must first exit your force field.
You can continue to search while inside a force field.
Keep an eye on the amount of AP you are using (it is displayed above the game map). It is a split display, for example 12/186. The first number is how many moves you have available to you before you run out for the current time period. The second is how many possible moves you have left in the day, even if you charge up your robot a bunch of times.
Your robot will get 1 action point allocated every 15 minutes. So if you run out of AP and log back into the game 2 hours later, you will have 8 more moves available.
You can get more turns then 1/15 minutes by finding and using chargers. There are 3 types of chargers, although only 2 are available out in the wild, the Standard Charger (which will give you 10 additional AP) and the Field Charger (5 additional AP). When you find a charger you can add AP to your current amount, but you will never be able to use more the 250 action points for a single day.
Suggestion #3: Before using up your last move, send a team transmission to let the other folks on your team know what your up to. For example: I am moving SW to help attack a force field - RobotName
Suggestion #4: As the map becomes cluttered with force fields, you will need to work more as a team then a lone robot, find a team that you like and work with them.
