How to play Ares

Preparing to join

Due to the cost in time of building ships during the Ares game, it is recommended that you build some blueprints outside before joining. Some blueprints do come with Ares just in case players don't have any blueprints. However, those blueprints are intentionally nerfed to promote players to build their own blueprints outside and bring them in.

In a nutshell

Each faction has at least one base, and usually the map will also contain control points. You will be assigned to one of the factions (by default Alpha or Beta Squadron). Your primary objective is to destroy all of your opponent's bases. Secondarily, you also gain credits by owning control points.

Bases

Each faction will have at least one base. Bases that are not destroyed will provide players with some credits just by being there. Bases cannot generally be captured, only destroyed. If your faction runs out of bases, your faction loses the game. You can check the status and location of all bases by using the !status base command.

Control Points

Control points are points that provide resources simply by being owned. You capture a control point by destroying all enemies in it's sector, and remaining in that sector for about 30 seconds. You will get a message when you take a control point. You can also check the status and location of all control points with the !status control command

Getting Credits

The game relies primarily on credits to buy ships. So the server allows the purchase of ships with only credits. Once the game starts, credits are given to players every few seconds, and the amount is based on the number of control points and bases your faction has divided amongst the players in the faction.

c : credits given to a given player
v : Total value of all stations owned by player's faction (generally Bases are worth 1, and control points are worth .5)
m : credit multiplier (set in ares.cfg)
p : Total number of players in the player's faction
a : number of players in the game
c = (v * m)/p * a