The survival game mode is one of the biggest parts of the game. The player has the possibility to fight an endless amount of monsters and test if they have the required skills to survive until the end.
General
The player has to survive a fixed time until they win the survival mode. The game counts as lost if the headquarters is destroyed and the player dies, thus having no way to respawn.
Every couple of minutes the wave becomes stronger meaning the amount of stronger enemy species (Ultra / Alpha) increase.
If the player upgrades their headquarters a special attack wave gets triggered.
Units placed on the map scale with difficulty and the monster strength increases the closer you are to the map edge.
Difficulty =creatures_base_difficulty + creatures_distance_per_difficulty / distance_from_player_initial_spawn
With difficulty limit being creatures_max_difficulty
Biomes
Survival can be played on 4 different biomes, each biome having different advantages and disadvantages, as can be read on their direct pages.
You unlock the other survival maps by beating the previous map, with at least some difficulty chosen.
| Biome | Map size | Ambient Units | Neutral Units | Passive Units | Enemy Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jungle | 6 | Quelver, Vesaurus | Jurvine | Gnerot, Krocoon | Canoptrix, Arachnoid, Hammeroceros, Baxmoth, Kermon, Bomogan |
| Desert | 6 | Rugwig, Mothray | Geotrupex | Gnerot | Mushbit, Zorant, Stregaros, Lesigian, Necrodon, Kermon |
| Acid | 6 | Crader, Vathamite | Sulphorit | Krocoon | Granan, Arachnoid, Nerilian, Bomogan, Nurglax, Phirian, Baxmoth |
| Magma | 6 | Venomine, Bitrid | Moltug | Gnerot, Krocoon | Morirot, Bomogan, Magmoth, Nerilian, Necrodon, Phirian, Drexolian, Hedroner |
| Metal | 6 | Stonger, Idapian | Brabit | Krocoon | Wingmite, Bradron, Octabit, Flurian, Lesigian, Kermon, Hedroner |
Difficulties
Difficulties are the settings which modify the whole survival experience the most. Each difficulty changes the survival gamemode in one way or another.
Hardcore modifier
Hardcore itself is not a difficulty but it's a difficulty modifier.
If the player dies once - even if their headquarter is still standing - the game is lost.
Default Difficulties
| Difficulty | Time to first wave | Time between waves | First wave strength increase | Subsequent wave strength increase | Enemy damage factor | Survival time | Resource volume factor | Max. objectives active | Weapons dropped
on death |
Creatures distance
per difficulty |
Creatures base
difficulty |
Creatures max
difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 5 minutes | 8 minutes | 5 minutes | 12 minutes | 0.33 | 60 minutes | 2 | 1 | 0 | 512 | 0 | 4 |
| Normal | 5 minutes | 7 minutes | 3:20 minutes | 10 minutes | 1.0 | 60 minutes | 1 | 2 | 1 | 256 | 0 | none |
| Hard | 5 minutes | 7 minutes | 3:20 minutes | 10 minutes | 1.0 | 90 minutes | 1 | 2 | 1 | 256 | 0.5 | none |
| Brutal | 5 minutes | 7 minutes | 3:20 minutes | 8:20 minutes | 1.0 | 90 minutes | 1 | 2 | 1 | 256 | 1.0 | none |
Sandbox
No waves spawn automatically, players have to send those themselves if they want to.
Features a sandbox control menu - press F11 to open.
Via the sandbox control menu all kinds of enemies can be spawned, events created or player settings manipulated.
Custom difficulty
This difficulty opens up another GUI page where the player can choose from lots of different options to create the difficulty they wants.
Such options are f.e: Enemy damage factor, building cost, game duration, map size, enemy wave strength etc.
Random difficulty
Most of the difficulty settings are random here, the player can only configure 5 values:
Wave interval duration, game duration, warm up duration, map size and if they want to have the sandbox control panel.
Everything else is always randomized.
Stream integration
If a player is streaming the game he can choose to connect his stream to those ingame events via Twitch. Once connected, players can vote for ingame events to happen.
The streamer has the possibility to enable / disable both positive and negative events as well as to change the voting time.
Rule: The option with the most votes happens - if 2 options have the same amount of votes, it's randomly decided which option happens.
Ingame Events
See: Survival Events