Information here is heavily-redundant and is covered in greater detail and less words in Unofficial Manual.
Movement Stats[]
GRND[]
Tire Type. MOV cut by triple on terrain, terrain defense. Travels fast in exchange for difficulty to protect itself (both in terrain defense and drone assistance) and difficulty over terrain.
Leg Type. MOV cut by double on terrain, terrain defense. Normal, sets the pace for other units.
Tread Type. Unhindered by land deduction*, terrain defense. Protects itself in terrain easily, outruns leg and tire units in terrain, captures capsules easily.
Flying Type. Unhindered by land deduction, unprotected by terrain defense (!). Has freedom to travel anywhere, especially water, to reduce sides attacked.
MOV[]
Units with low MOV control the tide of battle, and are probably going to come in hordes together, while the flying units get into position and cannons stay in the back, and the high MOV units run side roads to the capsules. This is how most missions carry out.
Flying units have very low defenses because they have higher MOV and can protect their sides by water. While a melee unit may want to be attacked by all sides to wittle down enemy health. Controlling how many sides are attacked is the most important role of the player, and constitutes easily most of the battle.
High MOV units also have more choice of who to attack, giving them control of the battle and allowing them to specialize in specific attacks. While lower MOV units are more generalized and should benefit hitting any target because they are restricted in tactical choice.
Highly mobile units like the stag beetle, bee, and spider, excel at reaching flying and tread units who retreat into difficult terrain or run away.
Defense Stats[]
Hit Points[]
HP is the weakest-raised stat in the game in terms of usefulness. Few units naturally have high HP, and those are the only units who utilize HP. HP determines how long the drone lasts while being attacked. Defenses can only lower attacks so much; for example, a critical hit will take out 400 at least, more than many units have in HP. This means even a pillbug can survive a powerful beam attack. HP and HP Recovery boosters are very weak and not recommended.
Defense[]
Defense is one of the most important stats in the game. Combined with terrain defense, defense capability far exceeds both other stats.
It evens damage to exact damage, and although it is less common naturally, it is approximately twice as potent than speed. One defense booster is often enough for high speed units to become tankish. Both multiply each other to reduce damage.
Defense is swapped out with barrier (mostly) when dealing beam attacks.
Speed/Evasion[]
Speed is half as strong as defense, but is common naturally, increases the chance of dodging heavily according to the enemy's accuracy, and has multiple times the chance to evade damage completely, although it has a chance to yeild full damage. Higher speed yields randomized damage, risky in a tactics game, but can be effective due to it fluctuating down and up.
Evasion is the only command that can be used for beam attacks; speed affects all damage equally. Flying units also are good with evasion because of their lack of terrain defense.
Even drones with very high evasion often should not equip speed boosters in favor of armors, very very especially before gaining the Winding Key or earlier in the game. Even in the endgame, it is debatable whether to have, for example, 276 speed over 123 defense, as speed still helps damage reduction in defending, as defense aids in evasion, and there is always the risk of full damage, and with low defense, any time that happens, the drone could be one-hit-killed.
Barrier[]
Again, weak-raised and often useless on boosters unless combined with natural speed. For example, a pillbug with 90 barrier will still be nearly as heavily damaged. Barrier units break the endgame, as it becomes standard to equip beam weapons, requiring you to weaken your team by using non-beam attackers. Similarly, barrier units are the only units who will be able to dodge against beam attacks. See Beam for more information.
Attack Stats[]
Attacks utilize two stats, equally; power and accuracy. The two multiply each other for damage equation. If one is low, it will heavily handicap damage, regardless of whether the other is high. The lower value will always heavily affect potential damage, even +10 on the weakest value will create a very noticable difference, and large increases the higher stat will cause little effect. When it comes to gun and cannon weapons, this effect becomes the worst limiter of potential, as dealing with accuracy-raising gear will chop or explode damage substantially. Melee damage is often close to 200 x 200, while reaching the same level with a gun that is 100 power would require 400 accuracy.
Melee Attack[]
Melee attacks are unique in that power levels instead of accuracy, while every drone has its own natural accuracy which always stays the same. As said, melee causes most damage, often both values being higher than 200. Melee attacks gain a bonus in hitting evasions, and many enemies defend from melee attacks. Drones often attack with melee, more often than guns, so melee-dominant units can kill many units in one turn by countering.
Melee Slot[]
The melee slot is the most capable and powerful. It gives melee units damage and boosted stats, provides gun units with the most accuracy of any booster, they're the strongest defense boosters start (10 for the side armors, 35 for thorax armors, 2 missions away from each other), and provide endgame Badlands players with +3 RNG for their cannoneers.
Gun Attack[]
Guns are specialist weapons; most enemies who equip guns as their main weapon will also have melee weapons equipped, with the exception of the cicada. Centipede fangs, falchions/battle axes, scrap fangs, and especially straw whips and dragonfly fangs, are all to weaken gun enemies. Guns also have the most effects on them. No weapon will have beam type except a gun or the firefly's cannon until the endgame. It also produces the two most effective units*, the Moth and Dragonfly, who are anti-ground. Guns, however, suffer from this usefulness, as guns are the weakest method of attack, and gun units are much weaker than melee units, and as a result die faster and need to defend anyway without a method of counter-attacking. Because gun accuracy is so much higher than gun power, 10 power makes an incredible difference.
Gun Slot[]
The gun slot is the only slot that can increase barrier or defense, and so is depended on for melee and cannon users. Versatiles who use guns with attack boosters are on the same level as real gun units. The gun slot also has more haphazard restrictions, like the spider and not equipping the last radar wing, or the mantis and not equipping the last vulcan. Melee units' gun slot boosters are weaker than their cannon slot boosters, but melee accuracy affects attack power twice as much as a cannon or gun's accuracy due to the equation.
Cannon Attack[]
The cannon is the most useful method of attack, because it can attack rangedly. In the endgame Badlands, cannoneers are able to hit enemies 8-9 spaces away, a larger range than is reasonable for every unit as MOV, even a flying anti- gunner with a Winding Key- and for many ground units, would require two turns of being pelted by cannon-fire. Unfortunately, cannons also suffer from the most costs. Powerful cannons take consequences in defense, movement, or cannon range itself. Also, because cannon accuracy is mostly natural, with most drones raising +1 with every level, including the cannon-dominant units themselves, very few units (four) can actually utilize cannons well. Cannons additionally suffer from a bonus in dodging with evasions. However, cannons are also one of the rare exceptions to the designers' over-balancing, and cannoneers are the most useful kind of drones.
Cannon Slot[]
Cannons are heavily-restrictive, and exclusively raise accuracy (with the exception of the terrible EnergyTank, and the useful Winding Key). As said, with the exception of the firefly, ladybug, locust, and roach, and of course the strider, no drone can use cannons well at all. Melee units have a full 60 accuracy in this slot rather than 40.
Attack Effects[]
Anti- Effect[]
G-Units: Dragonfly, Moth.
A-Units: Mantis, Cicada, Centipede.
Anti attacks are double against the specific unit type. Using the dragonfly as an example, anti drones are heavily weakened by their attack effect; the dragonfly often requires two slots filled, leaving a low attack power which essentially does full damage to ground units and half damage to air units. This extends to the mantis and cicada, whose potentials are limited greatly too. But it does not extend to the moth and centipede, who are unfairly balanced. These two units are deadly when crossed in battle, to the unit types they are strong against.
Beam[]
Decent Barrier Units: Butterfly, Firefly*, Roach.
High Barrier Units: Centipede, Scorpion.
Beam attacks are much more potent than anti attacks, but only cost 20 attack power. They will mostly ignore defense, and instead multiply the enemy's barrier and speed. During story mode, beam attacks are highly effective but rare. In the endgame Badlands, beam type will shift to very common, and non-beam attacks will be rare. This requires even greater equipping and tactical placement, as well as gives a high dependancy on speed. For more information, see Beam as its own article.
Experience Points[]
All drones will recieve 100% experience in story chapters. However, in the Badlands, units decommissioned and not revived recieve 80%, and units not used in the battle will recieve 70%.
Rewards[]
Rewards will further be taken down for all units for how many enemy units were decommissioned; experience and scrap ore by exact amount according to each enemy unit, and an amount of cards. Cards are weighed on their rarity and importance, and drained in order of that importance. For example, in Chapter 13, many players may not even see a Stinkbug Bomb or Spider Web card reward. Healing cards are almost always rewarded no matter what, even high-level healing cards; then attack cards, then defense cards, then area effect cards, then all other cards.