The confusion over the Family Properties has somewhat dissipated and families are starting to figure out how it works. The {ASS} Family is now on Level 3 and I've learned more about the upgrading process. Once the light bulb turns on, it's not as complicated as it initially appears. For more details on the Artillery Station, acquiring upgrade parts and defending your property, go
here.
To put Artillery Shells to use, go to your Family Page and click on the Properties Tab.
Your Artillery Station will be visible along with your level bonus, health and upgrade status and health (defense) bonus which each member of the family contribute to by adding 5 loot items.
All families were given a Level 1 Artillery Station that came with a bonus of +1,000 mafia attack points (equipment score). This bonus is not static and changes as your Artillery Station is robbed or repaired. The most it can ever be is 1,000. To keep the bonus high, you need to repair (heal) it. To repair your property, you need to redeem Artillery Shells. To do this, click on the repair icon located to the right of the health bar.
A new window will open and a "Repair" button will appear if you have Artillery Shells in your inventory. The repair button will also tell you how many Artillery Shells are needed to repair the property. In the example below, it was only 2. The number doesn't always match the health bar because other members of your family may have added parts after the window was open. If your repair button visible, click on it and your property will be healed up to the number of parts you have or 100% health is reached.
You can't add a specific number of Artillery Shells. To repair you have to add all of the ones you own or enough to get your property to 100% health. Once the property is at 100% health or you added all of your parts, the repair button will become shadowed.
You can only upgrade your property when the health is 100%. As soon as it drops below this threshold, the "Upgrade" button will be shadowed. The good news is once you add Artillery Shells to your upgrade pool, they can not be robbed. The only Artillery Shells that can be robbed are the ones in your health pool. To upgrade, click on the "Upgrade" button and all of the Artillery Shells in your inventory will be added and applied towards the upgrade. Once you have 0 Artillery Shells in your inventory, both the repair and the upgrade buttons will be shadowed.
When you get your health to 100%, it's a good idea to hunt down your family members and have them start dumping their Artillery Shells. I will admit this is the fun part. Upgrading our property was all the buzz on our family wall and everyone was very active in sending Artillery Shells to each other and bragging about how many we added. The count was posted many times and it was exciting to have a goal and watch it be achieved.
translation: DO NOT HEAL THE HEALTH OF YOUR PROPERTY UNTIL YOUR FAMILY HAS ENOUGH ARTILLERY SHELLS TO HEAL THE HEALTH OF THE PROPERTY AND ENOUGH FOR THE UPGRADE AT THE SAME TIME!
When we were almost there, I wanted to add the final Artillery Shells in hopes to get a screen shot. I was all out and wasn't fast enough to buy some with Reward Points.
When I refreshed, we had made it to Level 3 and found our attack bonus was 3,000.
The rule in my family is if our health is at 100% keep adding as many Artillery Shells as you have. Once the health drops, wait until a coordinated upgrade time is set. As you advance in level, this wait period could be days or even weeks. You want to maximize the number of parts you add to the upgrade pool because they are safe from being robbed. Healing for the sake of the bonus is a bad idea and a waste of upgrade parts. You will find you won't have enough to upgrade if they are constantly used for reparing. The bonus is nice and all but we all know equipment scores are not a huge part of the combat equation.
The Artillery Station is the first Family Property and there are more to come. The bonus is unique to this property and we will probably see a mafia defense bonus next. Hopefully they will come up with a way so it's clear what part of your overall equipment scores are from the bonus and what part is from your equipment. We aren't used to fluctuating equipment scores and it has caused a lot of confusion to those who don't know anything about the Family Property and how it works. The table below lists the repair cost which is the number of parts needed to heal your property from 0-100%, the upgrade cost which is the number of parts needed to upgrade to the next level and the mafia attack bonus for each level. Once you get to Level 10, Artillery Shells will only be useful for repairing.
Level
|
Repair Cost
|
Upgrade Cost
|
Max Bonus
|
1
|
500
|
1,000
|
1,000
|
2
|
600
|
2,000
|
2,000
|
3
|
700
|
3,000
|
3,000
|
4
|
900
|
5,000
|
4,000
|
5
|
1,200
|
7,000
|
5,000
|
6
|
1,600
|
10,000
|
6,000
|
7
|
2,000
|
13,000
|
7,000
|
8
|
2,500
|
16,000
|
8,000
|
9
|
3,000
|
20,000
|
9,000
|
10
|
3,500
|
Fully Upgraded
|
10,000
|
Thanks to Team Spockholm and Brandon Venery for supplying a lot of information taken from the back code of the game. If we had to wait for Zynga to properly explain this new feature, most of us would have given up.
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