Element guide - Tips and tricks for planetary domination

Element is a pretty neat sci-fi real-time strategy game that takes place on a spherical map. Although it streamlines quite a few elements of the genre to make things simpler on a touchscreen, the game can still be quite complicated and hectic.

If you spend too much time simply swiping to look around your planetary battlefield, your enemy can really build up momentum and steamroll you. With that in mind, check out these tips to help you in your galactic conquest.

Slow things down

The easiest way to stay on top of the full field of battle in Element is to slow the action down. In the game’s menu, there’s actually an option to set the game speed, and the slower you set it, the easier it is to check up on things without worrying as much about your enemy.

When you’re just trying to get used to Element’s gameplay, you might want to set the game speed to 10, the slowest setting. This makes everything move in super slow motion, making it easy to get the hang of the controls and learn the flow of a match with plenty of time to react to whatever the AI does.

Always go for supplies

There will be times when playing Element where a supply crate appears on the map. Generally speaking, it’s always a good idea to go send drones to pick them up. These supplies can give you things like a boost of resources or repair drones, which can really turn the tide of a battle.

Sometimes, it can be hard to interrupt your action just to look for these supply crates though. To help make this easier though, there’s a trick. You can actually pause any game of Element by hitting the menu button and still rotate the map as the action is paused. Doing this can let you hunt down supply crates without missing any of your enemy’s counter attacks.

Fill the gaps

When building structures in Element, each one takes up its own footprint on the planet. Since you can build just about anywhere in the game at any time, this means you can build attack units right next to the enemy base, but unfortunately so can they.

The AI (smartly) blocks you from being able to do this most of the time by building a lot of defense units tightly around their main base, and it’s not a bad idea for you to plan to do the same. If you’re not careful and you leave even the smallest gap in your structures near your base, the enemy will definitely try to use it against you. Try not to let that happen by building outward from your base with no gaps between structure footprints.

Prepare for orbital lasers

As you get further into Element, enemies eventually get the power to build orbital lasers, which are powerful attack units that can destroy whole structures extremely easily. These units are usually summoned pretty late into a match, but you need to prepare for them appropriately if you want to make sure you can still pull off a win.

To deal with orbital lasers efficiently, you’ll want to bank quite a few resources as soon as it appears and then launch a bunch of missiles at it. Although attack and defense units are your typical way of dealing with enemy threats, missiles are far and away the best way to take down orbital lasers before they become a huge problem for you.