After completing the main campaign, you unlock Experiments mode, which allows you to play procedurally generated levels with randomized objectives. Doing so earns you Research points which you can use to purchase "blocks" that you can then use to make your very own custom towers to use within Experiments.

I've played about 60 hours of Experiments at the time of writing this, and this guide is simply me sharing the custom towers I've designed through lots of testing and iterations.


YouTube: http://youtube.com/CalebSimpsonTV
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CalebSimpsonTV
Twitch: http://twitch.tv/CalebSimpson
Discord: https://discord.gg/G9GSEGZ

Crystals are most efficient when creating four at a time with the FARM_BIG schematic. However, shuffling around crystals is a huge waste of time, so rather than making a funky shape, the best practice in my opinion is attempt to design towers that can utilize the "four crystal" shape and convert that into a tower immediately. For very strong towers, ideally either two sets of the FARM_BIG schematic right next to each other, or designed so that you can simply bring a few crystals over to steadily increase it's power, but without having a complicated design that confuses you or wastes your time.

I HIGHLY advise you to make towers of varying levels of quality that are just slightly larger variations of the previous versions. This allows you to steadily add blocks and/or crystals to increase the strength of your towers. By having these incremental increases in power, you're taking full advantage of the resources you've deployed, rather than having big jumps, such as having one require 2 crystals and the next requiring 8, if instead, every block matters, it makes every choice useful.

Try to keep the designs very simple, and ideally, just slight variations between completely different types.

Have towers of similar shape, maybe one block difference. This allows you to move one or two blocks to completely change a tower's function. (I.E. changing from fire to electric, or resource gathering into siege, etc.) This is invaluable when needing to quickly adapt, or simply being efficient with your resource deployment because you can move a single block on a tower to change it's function between waves, then change it back into the appropriate defense.

One of my favorite tactics end-game is to switch between a "murders everything" tower and a siege tower that blows up all buildings and infection. The only difference between the two towers is a single block. Sooooo, by picking up that block, I blow up all the buildings in the distance. By plopping the block back down again, it kills all enemies. Both of these towers are SO GOOD at their individual task that they accomplish it really fast and effectively, which allows me to use one single "tower" to accomplish both tasks simultaneously, and this is during growth phase, just to be clear! This is incredibly powerful and very economical, as well as extremely easy. But it's only possible because I DESIGNED IT THAT WAY ON PURPOSE! Just something to keep in mind while you're making your schematics. In that sense, it's fine have a tower go SUPER HARD at a specific task because you can instantly switch to something else that counters a different problem and you're able to deal with those problems as they arrive within a few seconds. If you design it in a way where the amount of effort for you to change them is minimal, then it gives you tons of flexibility and you're able to fully capitalize on each individual towers' strength to highest degree, which can be more effective than trying to have a single tower that's mediocre in multiple areas or having multiple towers which ends up costing twice as many resources. This is far more powerful than you would expect at first glance and gives you a huge boost in versatility while you're building your economy.

The base game offers many low tier towers with one or two crystals. That's fine and has that base covered pretty thoroughly, so I don't feel the need to reinvent the wheel. Additionally, we have a bunch of new blocks to play with, primarily Mortar, BF Cannon, and several other modifier blocks to open up all new methods of gameplay. Outside of a few exceptions, basically towers that cost 4+ are where we can really bring something to the table here.

In my opinion, there's four areas that we need to keep in mind for our schematics:
- Good way to kill buildings
- Good way to keep infection back
- Towers that are REALLY good at killing at a choke point
- Possibly towers that eventually kill anything on the screen once we have enough resources

1 Resource Harvestor
1 Crystal Generator M2
2 Range M2

cost: 8 🟩

Easier to build, further range and costs 40% less (13 vs 8 block total cost). It's just straight-up better. Never use default harvester again. Also, because this has far range in one direction, useful for shoving up against a wall to collect resources on the other side, particularly when there's resources spawning in infection where there's just a single place that blocks can still appear in, you'll be able to collect them over time, even if you're trapped defending in your base.

---

1 Discharger
3 Plasma Generator

cost: 6 🟩

Default TX1 schematic in-game has one block that's useless. Having this recipe will allow you to situationally save resources.

---

1 Discharger
1 Crystal1 or Crystal2

cost: 6 🟩

Any 2 crystals next to each other will now defend themselves automatically. Really useful for making 4 crystals with FARM_BIG which you then have to run away from for a bit, they'll be safe from projectiles or curious slimes in the meantime. Also, just so you know, with FARM_BIG, 3 blocks becomes 1 crystal. So the total cost of this schematic is the exact same as the previous one (Zap1).

I highly recommend you add this recipe to your game, even if you never do anything with it. If you really WANT to use these though, they can be kinda nice to put on either side of your main defense towers because they take up so little room and can be enough to stop tiny stragglers. Not an ideal use of resources though, just to be clear. There's some wasted energy in the schematic, so it would be better overall to merge into something stronger.

---

1 Discharger
3 Crystal2
1 Plasma Generator
7 Firerate2 = 0.4s
1 Damage2 = 4
1 Splash = 1
1 AP = 2 (can kill lightly armored)

cost: 23 🟩

Decent value, fast, easy. Surround 4 crystals with blocks to become an electric tower with high stopping power and slight splash.

The "hole" will determine the closest crystal being the Discharger, which allows you to scooch your firing starting point as close as possible.

---

1 Discharger
3 Crystal2
1 Plasma Generator
3 Range2 = 14
5 Firerate2 = 0.6s
1 Splash
1 AP = 2 (can kill lightly armored enemies)

cost: 23 🟩

Exact same as previous but trades damage and attack speed for range instead. ONLY USE THIS AS A SECOND TOWER, if you have to choose between one or the other, use the other one, as it does 3x dmg (2x dmg, +50% attack speed). This one is nice when it's BESIDE your main defense building so its range will reach to soften them up before they get to your closer range hard hitter.

Just like the other one, the missing block will make the closest crystal the Discharger. Technically, you could use both at the same time by simply moving the block back and forth to swap between the ranged and dmg version.

---

1 Discharger
4 Crystal2
2 Range2 = 12
6 Firerate2 = 0.8s
2 Splash = 2
2 Damage2 = 6
1 AP = 2 (can kill lightly armored enemies)

cost: 28 🟩

By adding a single crystal and two more blocks to the previous two schematics, I tried to make something that has all the benefits of both Zap4dmg and Zap4range together in one. Solid defense for the early part of most missions.

The awkward block off to one side is so that we can throw another set of four crystals next door and it'll fuse with this tower eventually, thus, if I'm GOING to have a sad little reject block somewhere, I'd rather it go somewhere useful where I don't have to suck it up and move it later since it'll be absorbed anyway. If it bothers you, go ahead and make a schematic with the block right next to the crystal. You can make one facing the other way so the regular block can go to either side of the crystal and still work.

Two schematics for this one so that we can place the crystal on either side.

---

2 Mortar
4 Crystal2
6 Range2 = 24
2 Splash = 3
2 AP Booster = 3 (max)
1 Buckshot = 6 total projectiles
1 Sector1

cost: 26 🟩

Siege tower, strictly for blowing up buildings and taking down infected. By moving the two front blocks over to other sides, you can rotate this tower to hit other directions. By having the two mortar guns in the front corners, you get the advantage of them spreading out their splash more as well as reaching slightly further to each side.

Great balance of stats, and is the overall the most useful combination at 4 crystals that I've found. Really great, even late game. Highly recommended.

---

2 Plasma Gun
4 Crystal Generator M2
2 Damage M2
8 Firerate M2
1 Splash
2 AP

cost: 27 🟩

Decent overall value with a focus on damage. Main thing worth noting here is the high AP, allowing it to kill armored targets. This is a solid "standard" tower, but it will only last up through early game and need to be replaced with something better.

---

2 Plasma Gun
4 Crystal2
7 Firerate2
2 Buckshot
1 Dmg2

cost: 25 🟩

"Shotgun" really describes this well: close range, lots of projectiles, kinda slow reload, lots of dmg. By itself, I think it's just kind of okay. Best use here is to build another four crystal chunk behind it and make that a "sniper" version, which softens stuff up before it ever gets to this, that way the stragglers just get blasted with a meaty hit from this shorter range tower. The projectiles travel a bit further beyond the activation range too, so things beyond it's range will still get pelted with shrapnel. That's part of the philosophy here: it attacks slow, but sprays tons of projectiles in that direction which gives it breathing space.

---

2 Plasma Gun
4 Crystal2
6 Firerate2
4 Range2
1 Buckshot
1 AP Booster

cost: 26 🟩

Ideally, goes behind a close range tower (and can eventually be fused together to create something stronger). I placed two of the blocks behind because I figure this tower will always be in the back, so those blocks will be out of the way.

---

2 Plasma Gun
3 Crystal2
1 Flamebomb
1 Plasma Generator
2 Firerate2
3 Range2
1 Damage2
1 Splash

cost: 22 🟩

Slightly higher raw damage than alternatives, but relies on setting everything on fire to kill things. Pretty decent overall. I recommend this towards the front. Overall, I'd say this is the best 4 crystal value of the Plasma towers. It accomplishes the same things, but uses less resources, so for early waves, it's pretty fantastic. Additionally, burn is great at destroying infection, since it'll spread far beyond the activation range.
Main disadvantage is it doesn't work against armored targets, so something like Plasma4regular would be better for that. Although, Zap4dmg is nice alternative as well, and that only requires adding a single block, so probably more practical.

---

4 Plasma Gun
4 Crystal2
4 Firerate2
2 Range2
1 Splash
2 Buckshot

cost: 25 🟩

Generally, I think many projectiles on Plasma is pretty bad as they focus fire the same target. This tower is all about having a narrow killing field at a corridor. Main advantage of this is it's narrow so it can fit in tight spaces.

Quick tip about this one: if you build multiple of them side by side, try to stagger them diagonally a little (still touching, just a little bit stepped) which will spread out their activation times, rather than them ALL firing at the same target.

Technically, because they're so narrow, you can have several of them next to each other, like 3+ and then use a Boost1 (75% efficiency) to enhance all of them at the same time. However, I think that's a TERRIBLE decision and I have a whole rant about boost towers later in the guide if you're interested. Basically, it's better to have your initial schematic be better. If you need to have more power, design higher tier towers so you can add blocks and steadily increase their firepower so you get 100% of your firepower.

Generally, I'd prefer using other towers with 4 crystals because those can be easily upgradeable, meanwhile this one requires me to shuffle things around once it's outlived its usefulness. This wastes tons of time for no reason. The main reason I think this tower is cool though is for tight corridors and also for early on when you don't have a lot of block types unlocked. Being able to effectively use several Plasma Guns is nice. By the way, you can swap out some Splash for more guns and that's viable too.

---

1 Flamethrower
3 Crystal Generator M2
8 Range M2 = 22

cost 21 🟩

Really cheap, basic tower for a narrow killing corridor at extreme range. Useful to place behind another 4 crystal tower so this will widdle them down before they get to the shorter range one that finishes off whatever stragglers make it that far.

Alternatively, you could have this in the front and then either Zap4dmg beside it to finish off anything that gets close, or Plasma4sniper behind this to accomplish something similar, since that tower's dmg is more instanteous. Either of those options would work fine.

---

1 Flamethrower
1 Flamebomb
3 Crystal Generator M2
1 Plasma Generator
4 Firerate M2 = 1s
3 Range M2 = 12

cost: 23 🟩

Nice early game tower to plop down 4 crystals at a chokepoint, then bring a single crystal you started out with and attach it to immediately have a cheap, solid defense. This is a nice balance of range, attack speed and burn, but you can swap out some Firerate for more Range if you want to rely more on the burn and have a burny sniper instead.
Ideally what happens with this one is you attack enemies sorta diagonally, like, in passing. You want the projectiles to indeed go TOWARDS them, but not have the enemies crash into you. If you can find a sweet spot, this tower, even though it has low range, will tear through hordes of foes like crazy. Its advantage is that it does damage over time, but unfortunately, you might not HAVE that much time before they crash into you. SO, for this tower specifically, it's almost like... you do an L shape with this one pointed to sidewise into the oncoming swarm as they run past you. So you have it just to the side of the mouth of your choke point.

---

1 Flamethrower
4 Crystal Generator M2
4 Firerate M2 = 0.9s
5 Range M2 = 16
1 Sector 2
1 Splash
1 AP Booster = 3 (max)

cost: 27 🟩

Fast attack speed, max AP (destroys all buildings), decent range and sector. Allows you to clear out infection around your base quickly. The actual damage is extremely low though, so be warned. If stuff spawns immediately after a building is destroyed, easy to get overrun. My suggestion is remove one block to make it Zap4dmg and as soon as those spawns are dead, plop the block back in place. I tried to make this have a 90 degree firing angle so that you can move the crystal to other sides, you can clear out infection in all four directions, 360 degrees. The advantage of doing it this way is it's economical and allows us to focus our firepower in exactly what we want, where we want.

---

1 Flamethrower
1 Flamebomb
4 Crystal Generator M2
1 Damage M2
2 Firerate M2
7 Range M2

cost: 28 🟩

Significant upgrade over previous (Flame5burn). Very economical killing corridor tower with spread, a little pierce, slight raw damage, and sets EVERYTHING on fire. Slightly reliant on the burn damage to kill stuff and excels at murdering floods of small units. Very solid tower that's amazingly effective for how few resources it requires.

It fails against fire immune or armored targets. Use against swarms. Alternative is BF6, which can be achieved by removing a single block. That one is better against the exact opposite things that this tower likes, so use whichever enemy composition that particular mission has.

---

1 BF Cannon
5 Crystal2
1 Plasma Generator
6 Firerate2 = 2.1s
1 Sector2
1 Range2 = 20

cost: 27 🟩

Economical tower for a killing corridor choke point. Great value, lots of damage. It struggles a bit against swarms of little guys and can get overwhelmed. If a wave has too many little worms, you might consider adding a single block to make it Flame6.

Because this one is better at killing beefy guys, another thing you can do is alternate back and forth. If there's a wave that has a mix of stuff: little worms and some occasional beefcakes or shielded jellyfish or fire immune, you can swap back and forth between BF6 and Flame6burn by simply adding or removing the block in the corner. This way, you can hard counter stuff in real time, and do so economically. When you're starved for resources at the beginning of some missions, this can be incredibly helpful.

---

1 BF Cannon
5 Crystal2
4 Plasma Generator
8 Firerate2 = 1.5s
1 Sector2
1 Range2 = 20

cost: 32 🟩

The purpose of this tower is to increase it's power while you're in the middle of trying to upgrade it to the next tier. I use this when I'm either waiting for resources, or waiting for more crystals to build. I can go ahead and place regular blocks on this, make it temporarily stronger while I'm steadily bringing crystals over. To be clear: Plasma Generators are inefficient, but this way, we're getting a benefit rather than having blocks that aren't accomplishing anything. This isn't a super important schematic, I just liked the idea of my towers always being effective. This is more noticeable for the higher cost towers since you're scrambling to get it completed in time, so having smaller gaps between bursts in strength is very helpful.

---

1 BF Cannon
7 Crystal2
1 Buckshot
9 Firerate2 = 1.7s
2 Sector2
2 Range2 = 20

cost: 38 🟩

Best choke point defender in the game (as far as value). Will last through end game and kill anything. Buckshot + BF cannons is such a stupidly powerful combo.

I really want to highlight that there's several sets of four crystal towers you can use together, like a close range + sniper/zap version under the Flame or Plasma sections, but... this tower here accomplishes the same thing with fewer resources. It costs around 10 blocks less on average compared to those options I just listed, which is almost enough blocks to buy another 4 crystals. For the sheer sake of economy, once you have BF Cannon unlocked, I HIGHLY recommend you consider this for your chokepoints because it'll save you resources which can then be directed towards other things. Don't underestimate how much of an impact those savings will give you. The difference between having another 4 crystals and not is HUGE!

---

1 BF Cannon
7 Crystal2
1 Plasma Generator
8 Firerate2 = 1.3s
2 Sector2
5 Range2 = 28

cost: 40 🟩

Similar to previous tower, but more of a focus on range and attack speed. It lacks the overpowered Buckshot mod though and has a few more blocks in it. Overall, the regular BF8 is more powerful than this one, but this is still probably good enough (if you have a long enough corridor) to defeat anything.

The main advantage of this schematic is that you can build two FARM_BIG and then just fill it in. This saves us time since we don't have to haul crystals around, but more importantly, it leaves everything in the correct position so we can continue adding blocks after that to transition into the other end-game towers. So if you're building this looking towards the future, this might be a better option compared to BF8buckshot.

If you really like the Buckshot mod, you can move things around in this schematic to make it work, (it's not like this HAS to be a sniper,) though, you may have a weird amount of energy left over or have one side have a single more or less block. Something like this?

1 BF Cannon
7 Crystal2
1 Plasma Generator
7 Firerate2
1 Buckshot
2 Sector2
4 Range2 = 24

Anyway, we all know the real reason this tower is amazing is because of it's shape 🍌😉

I tried to design my towers so that I could place two FARM_BIG next to each other, then fill it all in. This allows us to build endgame towers VERY quickly. I made them so one side is the "effective" side, meaning you can have the other half out of the way by shoving it to the side or behind, either way. This gives you flexibility based on available space.

Some towers have multiple schematics for different orientations. Excessive and tedious to make? Yes. Super freakin' nice? YES. I finally broke down and decided to try it, and oh my goodness, it's incredible. Makes the gameplay very "smooth" and it "just works". I didn't realize what I was missing out on through stalling to do this. Additionally, one other perk is those enemy buildings that lock certain schematics: by having tons of schematics, you're significantly reducing the chance that a tower you intend to use is locked. Kind of an unnecessary abuse of the system, but I'll take it I guess? 😆

Lastly, you can change which tower it ends up being by simply adding/removing/moving a single regular block/crystal. I designed it so I can use Mortar8 in whichever compass direction I want, then simply add/move a block to swap it to a dmg tower which kills all incoming baddies, then immediately swap back to push back infection again. By alternating between siege and defense with a single tower, each one can focus on that task HARD and only in a 90 degree angle, since we can just change the orientation of the tower by simply editing a block at a different point in the schematic. Because we're narrowed down to 90 degrees, that means we can focus all of our resources into making each of these interchangeable towers as badass as possible within those limitations, as opposed to worrying about increasing the sector needlessly.

This all allows us to adapt to different scenarios VERY quickly, easily, and logically, while simultaneously being incredibly economical. Also, there's something extremely satisfying about both defending and aggressively pushing back infection during growth phase and they can't do anything about it. Anyway, you get all of the benefits of some of the strongest towers in game simultaneously, but not requiring you to have pay for two completely different towers. THIS stuff is where my designs really shine.😎

---

2 Mortar
8 Crystal2
10 Range2 = 30 (max)
5 Firerate2 = 4.3s
4 Splash = 5 (max)
2 Buckshot = 10 projectiles
2 Sector2
2 AP Booster = 3 (max)

cost: 51 🟩

Siege tower that shoots a slow volley of 10 projectiles with max range, max splash, that carpet bombs a massive area, prioritizing buildings. The explosions usually land staggered rather than all at once, resulting in them killing any units that immediately spawn afterwards, though the beefy purple guys or Tumors might require you to transform your tower into one of the other 8 or 9 cost towers temporarily to finish them off, then transform it back into Mortar8. But yeah, fantastic tower, amazing value. Not really great for defending though, this is purely intended for taking out buildings and infection, and it's the best tower I've ever designed for that task.

---

1 BF Cannon
7 Crystal2
8 Plasma Generator
1 Buckshot = 3 projectiles
4 Sector2
2 Range2 = 20
11 Firerate2 = 1.1s

cost: 50 🟩

Similar to the regular BF8 Buckshot schematic, but faster attack speed. It uses many Plasma Generator (inefficient) to bring the ratio of blocks to similar levels as other endgame towers. Allows you to quickly swap from Mortar8 to this by removing a single block. It's dmg is VERY high and will destroy anything.

---

1 Discharger
7 Crystal2
2 Plasma Generators
11 Range2 = 30 (max)
10 Firerate2 = 0.3s
1 Damage2 = 4
1 Splash = 1
2 AP = 3 (max)

cost: 51 🟩

Decent discharger tower with max range, a little extra dmg and splash. Extremely fast attack speed. This will basically kill anything as long as they're not lightning immune.

Plasma Generators are inefficient, but this also provides a nice sweet spot for number of blocks to have good Firerate while also being very easy to build.

Personally, I found these schematics to be good enough for my needs, and the sector covers a wide enough area that the blind spot is manageable. If it worries you, you could swap one of the Firerate2 with another Sector2, which will increase reload speed by 0.1s, but also increase the sector to the point where it's a smidge shy of 360 degrees. Personally, I feel like 25% more dmg is so a huge increase that the slightly larger blind spot is more than acceptable, but do whatever makes you happy.

By the way, the reason for the on-their-side schematics is that the hole is right next to the middle for Mortar8 so we can quickly swap between them.

---

3 Plasma Gun
8 Crystal2
4 Range2 = 12
11 Firerate2 = 1.1s
3 Buckshot = 7 projectiles each
2 Sector2
2 Splash = 2
1 Pierce = 1
1 Plasma Generator
AP = 3 (max)

cost: 53 🟩

This tower is WORSE than Zap8 or any of the BF8 schematics! The reason I'm including it is because until you've acquired enough research points to unlock BF Cannon, this is your next best option! Similarly, Zap8 is generally a better value and will work better in most circumstances (unless they are lightning immune).

Fires a shotgun-like blast of 21 splashing, piercing, armor penetrating bullets every 1 second. This will shred pretty much anything in the game. I don't recommend making the range any higher than this because Plasma Guns will fire at buildings within their activation range, even if those buildings are behind a wall, causing them to fire at them uselessly rather than attacking the stuff you actually want them to. Other than that though, Plasma has no resistances to worry about, so it just works against everything.

The 8 crystal cost makes this tower convenient, resource-wise, since sometimes you need defenses for those first waves but can't quite squeeze out 9+ crystals at the start of a map. This will obliterate choke points. Remember, Mortar8 will take out all the infections and buildings, meanwhile you just swap to this to defend as enemies get close, then swap back. So you don't NEED this to kill anything other than the waves coming through your choke point.

The Pierce and Splash are flexible and can be swapped around (or if you haven't purchased them yet). I would say Buckshot > Splash > Pierce is the unlock priority. This is also true because that's what you want for Mortar8, which is an absolutely amazing tower. Once you've unlocked those and BF Cannons, then this particular tower becomes completely obsolete and I would delete these schematics at that point so you don't accidentally make them while doing other things. The game tends to prioritize whatever the highest resource cost schematic can possibly be formed out of the deployed blocks, so, if it accidentally keeps trying to force this obsolete schematic, it's VERY annoying. Anyway, this tower is just to hold you over until you get better options, but will allow you to tackle high end missions in the meantime.

The 8 crystal towers are all great, however, if we add a single crystal, we can boost them to the point where they overkill a little harder, giving us some more breathing room and allows for more optimal use of energy (for the zap towers anyway).

---

1 Discharger
8 Crystal2
11 Range2 = 30 (max)
11 Firerate2 = 0.2s
1 Firerate1 (use up that 1 energy)
1 Damage2 = 4 dmg
2 Splash = 2
2 AP Booster = 3 (max)

cost: 55 🟩

Similar to Zap8, but adds more splash and firerate. It has a nice balance of stats that kills both swarms and bosses a very quickly, but you could swap things around a bit if you really want it to focus on just one. This is my favorite "general purpose" tower for value-per-resource to kill things on the screen. Unless they specifically have lightning immunity, this just works.

I have 4 schematics for moving the orientation of the tower (and thus the blindspot) around. On the upright end, you could probably get away with just one schematic facing that way since all it accomplishes is moving the Discharger over one slot. Alternatively, if all of this bothers you, you could also swap out a Firerate2 for a Sector2, which would help with the blind spot immensely, however, that adds another 0.1s to the firing rate. Being at 0.2s right now, and bumping it up to 0.3s means we're reducing our damage by 33%. In my experience, a blind spot of this size is fine and having multiple schematics gives us options. I'm a pretty firm believer in just having more schematics to optimize our orientations to funnel every scrap of energy into making the tower as badass as possible. That 33% goes a long way, but if less dmg but more convenient effective range is more important to you, then do what makes you comfortable here.

---

1 BF Cannon
8 Crystal2
7 Plasma Generator
2 Range2 = 18
11 Firerate2 = 1.3s
2 Buckshot = 5 projectiles
4 Sector2

cost: 55 🟩

Very similar to the BF8 Endgame, it's another semi-inefficient BF Cannon that uses a ton of Plasma Generators to bring up the blocks to a similar number as other towers so we can maintain this "end game tower" shape. Zap9 is better value-per-resource and much easier to use, but if you suddenly have lightning immune enemies, you can move the crystal over one to transform it into this, which will kill anything. THAT is actually why this tower exists: it's the "oh crap, I have to do something NOW" tower so that you don't die. You can salvage the situation by moving a single crystal.

The other good use for this is as an alternative to using Mortar8 in general. If you're using the lightning towers, then want to destroy some infection but it's really close or you don't have a lot of time, you can pick up the crystal and move it over one, turning into this fast close range BF tower which will react very quickly and save you, then as soon as the danger is past, move the crystal back to return to Zap9. This can be situationally more effective than using Mortar8 since that has such a slow firing rate and may prioritize buildings in the distance or clusters of guys rather than the infection that's about to murder you.

1 BF Cannon
11 Crystal2
1 Plasma Generator
7 Range2 = 30 (max)
11 Firerate2 = 1.8s
2 Buckshot = 5 projectiles
8 Sector2

cost: 65 🟩

Shoots 5 projectiles every 2 seconds to max range within a huge area. Very similar to the Zap9 towers, but it destroys buildings and infection too while also having no resistances to worry about, it kills everything. Mainly is so expensive so that it can have a giant radius. There's several schematics that just have a slightly different orientation, which allows us to move a single regular block to change the firing position, effectively moving the large blind spot. By doing this, we can still have our effective range economically (as opposed to needing 16+ crystals instead for 360 degree coverage and increasing the total cost by like 19 blocks as well as making the design more complicated and confusing). The BF crystal location (schematic) is the one closest to the single regular block, always pointing in the direction you indicate. Very intuitive and easy.

Ideally, you're planning ahead and using the "four crystal side" for your firing point, since that's the furthest forward and thus will give you one more block of range... but I went ahead and made schematics for the opposite side too. In a perfect world, you'd never use those ones (on the regular block side), but by having those schematics, if you have infection on the opposite side OR if you have this tower in the middle of your base and waves appear from both sides, you can easily alternate to push back infection during sleep phase. Being able to move your firing point to the opposite corner of our schematic by moving a single block is just *chef kiss*. Think of this way: by moving your firing point to the opposite end of your tower, which is, what, 9'ish (one is diagonal) blocks away? You're effectively (temporarily) increasing the range of your tower by 9 blocks. That's... not terrible... And all it took was moving a single block. Yes, making more schematics is tedious, if it really bothers you, you can skip those remaining four, but know that it can be advantageous, especially on higher difficulty missions.

One word of warning leaning on this tower though instead of Zap9: it does not destroy projectiles. As long as you account for that? OP AF.

Seems expensive?
Zap9 = 9 crystals (27) + 28 regular blocks = 55 block cost
basic plasma towers to keep back infection = 3 to 5 cost each, but let's say for the sake of argument that you only have one choke point and thus two 5 cost towers = 10 blocks
BF12 = 12 crystals (36) + 29 regular blocks = 65 block cost

So 55+10= 65+ (Zap9/BF9) vs 65 (BF12)
And that's giving Zap9/BF9 the benefit of the doubt and assuming they don't need even MORE basic towers for other areas if you have more than a single choke point! With BF12, you can suck all those up cause you don't need them anymore. This could potentially save you 10-30 blocks easily. Basically, in most situations, BF12 is actually more economical, and remember that as soon as you plop it down, it's basically impossible for you to lose and you never have to trade it out for anything else ever again.

This is the official tower that "breaks the game" in my opinion. If you can manage to create this next to your core in a survival mission, you just win. I also find it kind of funny that, if you start a mission and you have 65+ resources and enough space, if you make this next to your core, REGARDLESS of the mission type, you're instantly safe from everything. Like I say, it's more economical than you'd expect, and so rather than those resources being spread out, if you concentrate them in one location, it accomplishes the same thing, you're just not used to seeing it that way (all together rather than spread out). What I'm trying to explain is that you're probably using this amount of resources already, if not a fair amount MORE. Of course, this could be overkill and that's up to you to decide.

---

1 BF Cannon
13 Crystal2
2 Buckshot = 5 projectiles
1 Firerate1
13 Firerate2 = 1s
8 Range2 = 30 (max)
11 Sector2 = 360 degrees

cost: 78 🟩

I know some of you are probably curious right now: "if we're going this far, what would it take for complete coverage?" Well, I'm glad you asked, my inquisitive sir or lady!

Frankly, I think my previous schematic is MORE than "good enough" and shreds the entire world, but if you're swimming in resources, then it's not too difficult to add 2 more crystals and 7 blocks. After some testing, I think this has the best balance of stats to blow up everything reliably and keep you totally safe.👌

Unfortunately, you can't move the BF Cannon easily by moving a single block like you could with BF12, but, with 360 degrees, do you even need to anymore?

I did test a 13 crystal version, but it had to sacrifice too much attack speed within those limitations and made me very nervous, so I think 14 is the sweet spot to get it to do what we want. Also, at 14 it's pretty easy to build still? Feels logical and an easy enough upgrade. If you REALLY wanted to go crazy, you could bump up to 15 or 16 crystals and add more Buckshot mods (with the accompanying buffs to compensate for its detriments) to have even more projectiles, but that's even more excessive than we already are here. 😅

+ Very fast attack speed.
+ Fast projectile travel speed.
+ Decent versus infection.
- Low damage.
- No armor penetration. Bad against buildings by default.
- Blocked by walls.
- Blocked by repulse fields. (unless you can get fast enough projectile speed.)
+ Enemies have no special resistances to it.

Generally speaking, Plasma is better suited to smaller early-game towers, and the base game already comes with a bunch of those. While it is cheap, it takes quite a bit of resources to beef it up to the point that it's competitive with other tower types. It's biggest disadvantage in my opinion is that it can get stuck trying to shoot at buildings across walls, so if you design a tower that's too fancy, it ends up making it worthless.

Recommendation: Use base game plasma towers + some 4 crystal ones you design if you like. Going any bigger than that is, unfortunately, awful.

+ Spreads to nearby targets/infection.
+ Burns infection further than it's activation range.
+ With additional projectile speed, flames will pass well beyond their activation range.
- Low damage by default.
- Low armor pierce by default.
- Low range by default.
- Medium projectile speed is easily turned aside by shields. This can be countered by increasing projectile speed though...
~ Shoots a burst of many projectiles, but can only damage each enemy hit by one instance. Additionally, projectiles have a lot of spread... This can be used to our advantage however.

One of the most flexible tower types and easily adapted into something more powerful than the base game offers. However, has the same problem as Plasma where once you beef it up too much, it'll start hitting walls pointlessly. I really like it for destroying infection around my base though.

Recommendation: use some 4-6 cost towers you design, but no more than that as other towers are just superior in multiple ways at that point.

+ Defend against projectiles.
+ Instant travel time, which means they don't waste any potential shots unlike most towers.
+ Attack over walls.
+ Increasing Range will reduce Sector, but Discharge starts with 360 degrees, so this hardly matters. Careful tower placement can easily place blind spots where it doesn't matter. This makes Dischargers extremely efficient for a high range tower option where you don't have to worry about the deficit of Range M2.
- Doesn't destroy infection (unless they hit an enemy while possessing the Flamebomb mod to burn the ground).
- Doesn't attack buildings.
- Some enemies are immune to electric damage.
~ Note: Having a "high damage" discharge can be inefficient. It's better to focus on attack speed. My testing feels like Burst and Buckshot mods are bad for this tower type, but Splash is good.

Provides great speed, range, sector, and damage potential. As far as pure defense goes, it's great. You'll need other towers to stop infection and buildings though.

Recommendation: There's several good potential schematics at all crystal amounts. Great tower, just be wary of enemy waves suddenly becoming lightning immune.

+ Great alternative to Missile towers.
+ Shoots over walls.
+ Great versus infection and buildings.
+ Potentially decent damage, but hard to utilize well.
+ Pairs amazingly well with Splash and Buckshot mods.
- Projectiles are slow and will miss most enemies.
- Will focus on enemies, meaning most shots are often completely wasted. Not good to rely on these for combat.
~ Nuance about that though, when combined with another tower applying Freeze to slow them (such as a long range splash damage Discharge which has instant attacks), can make Mortars take full advantage of their damage and DESTROY enemy waves which are now slowed to stay within range of their blast radius.
- Mortar has terrible projectile speed, meaning it will often attack the same target more than once, even though the first shot will take care of it. The Buckshot Mod is pretty terrible on most tower types, but on Mortar, it's actually pretty good. The reason is because we want FAST projectiles, but LESS attack speed so they're not wasting potential shots. Achieving that balance is tricky.

+ Zaps (for 1 damage?) every 0.3 seconds or so. DESTROYS waves of small units and infection!
+ Primary projectile deals 20 damage on contact, consuming the projectile.
+ Attacks over walls.
+ Max AP by default! Kills all harder enemies and buildings.
+ Ignores repulse fields.
+ Projectiles will travel even further than their "activation range".
+ Good versus: buildings, swarms, tough, infection. Basically everything...
+ Buckshot mod is AMAZING for highly invested BF Cannons. Can easily quadruple your dmg.
- VERY slow fire rate.
- VERY slow projectile speed.
- EXPENSIVE.
- Even though this does very well against swarms, it's still only zapping "one guy at a time" meaning that it can get overwhelmed quite easily if there's too many. The big projectile will explode on contact, so if there's too many guys, it will be consumed very quickly.
~ Additionally, you want faster projectile speed, but if the projectile speed is TOO fast, it'll contact and break prematurely, lowering it's total damage potential. Finding that balance is tricky.
- Mods like Flamebomb and Freeze are pretty bad on this tower type. I believe it only applies those effects on projectile explosion, NOT on the zappy-zappy. It also takes too long for the projectile to reach them for damage-over-time to make sense, you'd be better off applying that to any other tower type and using that debuff tower in conjunction with this one, slowing them down so that these slow-moving projectiles can actually make contact (as opposed to missing if the enemies are moving to the side a bit) and one-shot them.

BF Cannons are some of the best towers in the game! The problem is they're painfully slow, outrageously expensive, and just kind of awkward by default... Designing them in a way that makes them PRACTICAL is the challenge!

Remember that each modification you use is percentage based and have detrimental returns. This means even a few blocks of Firerate or Sector make a big difference, meanwhile, focusing too hard on any one thing is inefficient.

Short answer: Boost Linkers are pretty bad. Read ahead for more info if you're curious, but my general advice is to skip them entirely. Every situation where they COULD do something beneficial, unfortunately, alternatives are just better. Below is my analysis and explanations.

Boost towers allow you to grant raw stats to other towers within the area of effect. Unfortunately, it does pass it on at reduced efficiency.

Boost Linker: 8 range, 75% efficiency. Costs 6 energy.
Boost Linker M2: 10 range, 50% efficiency. Costs 8 energy.

Note the efficiency change. Personally, I don't think the added range is worth it. Honestly, you can BARELY fit another tower in there, yet you lose 33.3% of that towers potential compared to a regular Boost Linker, which costs less energy anyway, meaning you can have even more buffs? Personal preference, I recommend M1 over M2.

The more towers you can have under the effect of your Boost, the more effective it is. But you need enough benefit for it to justify the cost. That means you need enough towers to amplify, otherwise it's just WORSE than having a better tower in the first place. Because Boost1 costs 6 energy, that means the bare minimum requirement for a schematic is 2 Crystal2s (+7 energy each).

NOTE: Even if only one block of a tower is within range, it will still be affected.

Buffs that scale well with weird percentages:

✔️Range2 (reduces sector)
✔️Sector2
✔️Damage2 (reduces firerate)
✔️Firerate2 (scales just fine no matter what, use as a filler to use remaining energy)
✔️AP (allows basic towers to counter armored / kill buildings)

The following buffs don't scale well (at 75% anyway, you end up needing weird amounts, so it's wasteful). Ideally, you'd have these on the individual towers themselves:

❌Pierce
❌Buckshot
❌Splash

1 Boost Linker1 (-6 energy)
2 Crystal2 (+7 energy each)
8 energy worth of buffs (4 regular blocks)

This would be the absolute bare minimum to get you up and running. This can be nice when combined with a tower that requires 6 crystals, since you can use the remaining two crystals to make a little boost tower at the beginning for all of your other cheap towers.

1 Boost Linker1
4 Crystal2
22 energy worth of buffs (11 blocks)

This is the easiest ratio, gives you options. It's also all divisible by 2, making keeping track of buffs easy.

If you are cramming many small towers in there, then because they're all stacked up, having more range (and sector to compensate) is probably the most helpful thing to actually allow of them to contribute. But a little damage and firerate helps a lot too. So, simple answer: you can evenly distribute your energy among all of those!

1 Boost Linker1
4 Crystal2
2 Range2 (reduces sector)
1 Sector2 (compensating)
4 AP = 3 (max)
2 Damage2 (reduces firerate)
4 Firerate2 (compensating + extra)

Note that I made it extend super far forward so I had more room to place towers within the buff zone. Also, they can totally touch, I just made them a space apart to make it more visually clear for the guide. Next, if you make a duplicate schematic mirrored facing the other way, you have flexible options for position, but more importantly, you can make MORE buff towers with the blocks in the bottom left be in slightly different positions, which uses a different boost schematic with different buffs. Then you can have TWO buff towers like this side by side, each extending their long line of blocks next to each other and affecting the same basic towers. With multiple schematics that are each mirroring each other, you can have flexible options for how you want to enhance your little army of trashy towers.
Although, having two separate towers is completely wasteful. There's a flat -6 energy cost to use a Boost1, which basically negates one entire Crystal2 (7 energy). So we're only getting the benefit of 3 Crystal2 in that image for example. If you want to beef up the buffs more, it's better to make a better buff tower that has more crystals and more buffs rather than two separate towers that each have a huge upfront cost knocked out of it pointlessly.

I personally think this is all a bit silly. If you need a killing field, there's much easier options. The main advantage of this is that you can steadily add more crappy towers and you get a nice boost each time since they're all getting a flat amount of buffs. Like every few blocks counts so you benefit from that incremental growth instantly and that feels good. Like I said at the beginning, you need enough towers to justify the cost of the boost tower.

One of the other big advantages: Plasma doesn't have any resistances to worry about, so for some of the high end content, something like this can make your death field work out regardless of what comes at you. Of course, at that point, I'd rather just use a BF cannon, which is an end-game option that also doesn't have to worry about resistances.

In this image, I'm using 46 blocks worth. BF8 uses 36 blocks, so it's cheaper, more powerful, better range, better sector, uses significantly less space and is easier to build... What...? This is kind of true across the board: Basically, unless you're overflowing with resources and want to boost an endgame tower (which is also inefficient since ideally boost towers would affect multiple buildings), I don't think Boost Linkers are very worth it. If you're wanting a better endgame tower then... just make a better endgame tower? Why bother with boosting it at reduced efficiency? In my testing, they're just not very economical and they never escape their opportunity cost debt. It's an uphill battle that you'll never win, resource-wise anyway. Their power-per-resource is just bad. So again: if you have resources coming out every orifice, then sure, knock yourself out. But otherwise... at the end of the day... they're kinda terrible?

Really, part of the deal is simply that Boost Linkers are a cool upgrade to some of the base game towers. But once you have unlocked more block types, you have the potential to make towers that exceed what Boost Linkers provide. That all kind of depends on the schematics you design. So yeah, that's the real answer at the end of the day. In short though: just don't use Boost Linkers at all and design better towers in the first place.

Protolife is an awesome game.
If you enjoyed this game, you'll probably like Mindustry as well. It's another tower defense / resource management indie game as well, and another one of my favorites. I have playthroughs on youtube as well if you're interested in checking it out:

Protolife walkthrough: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL225uzUuR4hFvhPCqC6AyzNzgGKK0PMXT
Mindustry 5.0 walkthrough: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL225uzUuR4hEtZ7jZbHGsVkepACuPETAB


YouTube: http://youtube.com/CalebSimpsonTV
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CalebSimpsonTV
Twitch: http://twitch.tv/CalebSimpson
Discord: https://discord.gg/G9GSEGZ