Mobile Strike - Combat Lab
Introduction
Mobile Strike has been extended with a new Building, the Combat Lab, which can be used to improve certain Legendary Set equipment.
What do we know so far?
The Combat Lab needs to be unlocked by a Combat Lab BLUEPRINT and can be upgraded using Power Cells and Spare Parts. All are as it seems now only available via buying packs, so this is a new spenders-only building.
The new concept of Power Levels is introduced. With this feature you can increase the Power Level of certain Legendary Set equipment resulting in massive bonuses. So be aware this is not applicable to all gear, not even to all Legendary Sets. One would expect it will be applicable to all Legendary Combat Sets, but that is just an assumption.
Update October 30, 2016
According to the blog the Combat Lab has been extended to level 20 and now allows you to increase the Power Level of selected gear to +10. Higher levels also reduce the Spare Part and Key Component cost for enhancing your gear.
Terminology Explained
The new building is called the Combat Lab, located to the left of your base urban plots, just below the Shooting galary.
You need a Combat Lab BLUEPRINT to unlock the plot, available via sales only.
You need Power Cells and Spare Parts (as well as regular resources) to upgrade your Combat Lab. Higher Combat Lab levels reduce the Spare Parts cost for upgrading your gear and increase the gears potential Power Level.
You can increase the Power Levels of certain Legendary Set equipment to get bonuses. The same gear can be upgraded several power levels up to a maximum of 5 (but you need to have upgraded your Combat Lab first to allow this maximum Power Level). Just to give an indication, we have seen a Troop Attack bonus of 30% for Power Level 5.
Spare Parts are necessary to increase the Power Levels, which can be acquired by disassembling old gear or breaking them in your Armory (according to the blog breaking gear in the Armory will provide a smaller amount of Spare Parts)
After you disassemble gear a cooldown timer of 20 minutes starts. You can use a Disassembly Kit to reset the cooldown timer.
In the blog Key Components have been mentioned, but so far I have not seen them in Combat Lab screenshots. There are also Max Core Power Level and Disassemble Enhance Refund improvements when you upgrade the Combat Lab, but for the currently available 10 levels are set to 0. It could be that all of these are relevant for upgrading your Core Equipment, which seems to not be available yet currently.
Conclusion
I am not too impressed with this new feature.
Like with the Building Boost Modifiers this seems to be quite a complicated new feature, with many new terms. One wonders whether it could have been kept simpler.
The area of Gear already has a lot of variation and complexity in it. Especially since we already have different gear, different mods, and different quality levels (of both gear and mods), to now introduce power levels of gear feels too much.
Maybe most important, I have the impression players who spend a lot of money on this might feel fooled. You probably need to pay several hundreds of USD to upgrade your currently best Infantry/Tactical/AV set to the maximum Power Level, but the risk is very high that within a very short time a much better Infantry/Tactical/AV set will be introduced and not only do you feel the urge to spend money to get this new set, you also want to upgrade that one to the maximum Power Level again. Think about that before starting down this road.
Contributed by: GamesGuide on September 27, 2016