Team Mode

Team Mode is a game mode in Starblast.io, released on 14 April 2017. In Team Mode, you can join as one of three factions, randomly named and with random colors and facility names. Your ultimate goal is to work with your team-mates and help destroy all enemy space stations and ships. (a basic Tutorial here Team mode Tutorial)

Gameplay and Mechanics

Players can upgrade up to Tier 3 before needing to upgrade the station to further upgrade. This can be done by depositing crystals into the station depots, which takes time and prevents ships from moving while doing so. Depositing crystals also gives you an equal amount of credits, which you can use to buy pods and secondary weapons. From then on, it is necessary to upgrade the station to upgrade to the next tier. It is vital to upgrade the station as quickly as possible to enable the team to compete. The team that upgrades the base the fastest is often the one that coordinates most efficiently, and thus generally ends up being the winner. Coordination between players is a must in Team Mode, and it is not recommended to roam the map alone unless if you have bought many upgrades. Sticking together in large bands can decimate most competition. Buying lives is generally not recommended (All ships level 1-6 having 4 lives now instead of 3)as it is almost always better to deposit your crystals to the station. However, if you are on your last life, it may be worth it to buy an extra life to avoid downgrading, especially if the risk of being attacked is high. Upgrading the station does reward you with points.

Team Mode starting screen: Choose sides. Note the above image is not accurate because ECP badges are not shown anymore

All ships before level 7 have 4 lives instead of ]3. Instead of the leading team having to kill a base they just have to kill the last fly 5 times because after that point they get the "game over" screen when you lose all of your lives in invasion or lose in team or survival. Attack pods do not damage ships when you are in a depot or immune after leaving a depot. You can also transfer crystals with [V] to your team mates.

In Team Mode, revenge markers are not present (though the rest of the revenge mechanic remains), and a unique algorithm is used for the initial team-joining check. All three teams are available for joining initially. The conditions for a team to be open to joining is:

• Total shield + energy capacity is less than x+300, where x is the average of energy + shield capacity of all ships in all teams.
• Number of players is less than 20.
• A single team is heavily dominating, in which case, the other two teams remain open.
• Player skill is now factored in with the locking of teams (purpose of it is to evenly distribute the skilled players with the 3 teams to avoid massive sweeps which most people hate, even skilled players)

A maximum of ~65 players can join a non-custom Team Mode, with a maximum of ~30 per team.

The unique friendly-fire mechanism is implemented in Team Mode, where shots from friendly players pass through friendly ships. Friendly collisions also damage only the ship that was thrusting against the other ship (this is mainly to avoid grieving Barracudas, which used to be a big problem). Ships that re-spawn in Team Mode are immune to all damage for 10 seconds, provided they do not fire weapons themselves(Although they can still fire secondaries without losing their invincibility). This is to help prevent spawn-camping, and is indicated by the ship flashing. Crystal yield in Team Mode is also higher, with the rate being 2x, as opposed to 1.35x in Survival Mode. There is a unique system in team mode where the gem drop rate increases over the first 5 minutes from both asteroids and the center aliens that starts at ~1 gem to the maximum amount of gems it will drop (asteroids drop far more gems than the aliens), the aliens give 18 as their max gem drop.

Once a space-station has been destroyed, no new players can join that team, and any existing ships in that team are immediately destroyed, and the faction is eliminated from the rest of the game. Generally, when a match has gotten to the point where a station has been destroyed, a single team is dominating. Attempting to decimate a dominating team by allying with the other team(Commonly known as Cross-Teaming) is often a good option in dire conditions. The station can now be destroyed just by destroying both the spawn ports and depots.

Tips

In the race to upgrade the station, a fairly good strategy is to skirmish enemies with nearly full cargo's and vulnerable ships, usually with multiple players, while other players remain to mine for the station. This sabotages enemy upgrades. It is not recommended to attempt a full-out assault on enemy stations before attaining fully upgraded Tier 6 ships, as the stations are exceptionally strong. (You can do this when the other team has been downgraded by yours and you have powerful ships.) To upgrade to Tier 7 ships, stations need to be Level 4 and have full gem capacity. However, it is recommended to fully upgrade Tier 6 ships before mining to max the base cargo. Tier 7 ships also have zero lives in Team Mode, one death leads back to downgrade to Tier 6. A good choice of Tier 7 ship is the Bastion, which is very powerful in groups.

It is common in Team Mode for players to not coordinate, often fully filling their cargo's and waiting for others to upgrade the station while sitting at the base, or to frequently steal crystals from team-mates. It is now harder to gem steal because you can't pick up more gems with a full cargo. (Also there is an increase in team mates helping each other mine.) But generally it is best to ignore such players. If too many such players exist inside a team, switch to another team to maximize chances of winning. Once all other stations have been destroyed, the victory screen will show up and the server will shut down. Even though the week test (and eventual update) from 2019-04-25 has drastically increased coordination with random people in team mode, you can still find teams without much coordination, but this is now somewhat rare.

If you go to the depot, you can change your laser pattern from offensive to healing, or from healing to offensive. You can then heal other ships on your team as well as their pods by hitting them with your lasers. While switching to healing still allows you to mine, your lasers will pass through enemy ships without damaging them. Some ships heal better than others, For example ships like the X2 with poor DPS don't make good healers but other ships like the Furystar or Aetos do. You can also donate/contribute gems and buy secondaries with the credits from the donated gems. A good way to power mine is to use ships with high shield capacity and regen as well as high mass(Such as the Barracuda) to ram and shoot asteroids, and then have healers behind them constantly healing them when they are low on health. This can get a lot of gems very quickly, however groups like this must be careful during fights as healing lasers can not damage enemies. There is a new strategy popping up in team mode involving heavy mines, all you have to do is go into one of the gaps with a full load of level 4+ of mines (one person will do very well), spam place them around you and attack the base normally. The other team will come running in try to attack you, but they will blow up the mines doing insane damage to the base (even higher than torpedoes). There is one really good counter, using projectiles (rockets, missiles, torpedoes) as they don't affect the mines, and then leaving the mines alone. Eventually the base will drift away from the mines and they can be safely removed. This is now rare to find, partly to do with people knowing how to stop it and due to there being more coordination.