Gameplay Guide

[Julenius]

Criminal Campaign

Strategy Map

• Your units can perform Assignments. Assigments sometimes lead to tactical missions.
  More assignments are unlocked as you progress in the game.
  
• Some assignments require you to have Fear or Respect in the district where you want to do that assignment.
  
• Menace assignment & mission will lead to enemy faction losing the ownership of a location. You need Fear before you can perform this.
  
• Coerce Ownership assignment & mission will bring the location under your ownership. It requires you to have respect in the district you want to perform that.
  
• Owning locations will unlock you new features and items. Unlocking even more stuff requires you to raise your location level.
  
• Enemy or neutral location’s level dictate how heavily it is defended.
  
• Units will rest and heal automatically, but you can heal them faster with heal assignment. Wounded units cannot perform any other assignment.
  
• Heat influences what the police does and can do. Some of your locations reduce heat everyday.
  
• If your unit has a Heat trait – it will create extra heat in both strategy map and tactical missions it participates.
  
• If you have situation where multiple assignments would lead to tactical missions - least meaningful one(s) will go to auto-resolve. There's many factors in play which one will be autoresolved, but in general least important missions and locations you've been to often are more likely to be chosen.
  
• If AI attacks a location that you're extorting - you lose respect in that district. But for a short period of time you will get retaliate bonus (extra respect) if you attack the same enemy who attacked 'your' civilians.
  

Tactical Missions

• When attacking an enemy your cursor selects the tile you want to attack. You can activate the attack by clicking the enemy, by space bar or by clicking the tile where you want to attack from. Pay attention to which tile is currently selected before you initiate the attack. Best way to avoid attacking from a tile you didn't want to attack is to learn to click on the tile. Player always is the one who selects the tile where they want to attack, game doesn't select that.
  
• Each unit apart from civilians have Zone Of Control. Moving within or away from Zone Of Control triggers free attack.
  
• Status effects remove Zone Of Control. Status effects are earned with moves like kick in the nuts.
  
• Each unit has 2 action points.
  
• Most skills can be combined with movement.
  
• Flanking bonus is earned for attacks from behind. That’s why unit movement comes with choice of orientation.
  
• Heat brings police force everytime a threshold is crossed.
  
• More loud and violent actions bring more heat. Knock outs and kills bring also additional heat.
  
• If you have a lot of Heat in strategy layer, you will start the mission with preaccumulated heat that grows faster. In worst possible case you start with some gained Heat.
  
• When police arrives – game reveals where your units have dropped items. Leaving them behind will increase heat a lot.
  
• Air gun is a strange gun because it doesn’t trigger gunfight. Bottles and ashtrays are also good ranged weapons to use in a brawl.
  
• Getting units arrested in police raid is smaller thing than not destroying the account books.
  

Police Campaign

Strategy Map

• To wipe out organised crime you need to arrest their mid-bosses and raid their locations.
  
• Final mission for each crime faction is a story mission, unlocked by reducing the boss & location count of that faction.
  
• To find out suspicious locations, assign your sergeants on patrol duty.
  
• To find out owners of locations use patrols, informants or crime scene investigations.
  
• Raiding a place needs evidence and known location owner. Successful raid makes the location neutral/civilian owned.
  
• Police units have no upkeep and cost nothing to hire
  
• Promotions will provide you with more sergeants, more units and more units to missions. They are earned via story steps.
  
• Crime scenes are spawned after missions and after certain assignments. You can perform three assignments there, but crime scenes will be removed soon so make sure you assign units immediately.
  
• Interrogate suspects requires evidence but will reduce boss-count.
  

Tactical Missions

• Arresting units takes place from behind, or from knocked out state.
  
• Arresting boss units will reduce their count in strategy layer, helping you wipe out the criminal faction.
  
• Police brutality is bad. Shooting first, attacking civilians, killing unarmed or lightly armed crooks will lead to internal investigations.
  
• Criminals will try to flee so make sure you arrest or stop them before they do that.
  

[malberg]

also .. could you explain what the "retaliate bonus" [ from the after mission screen] is please ?

[Julenius]

Yes. If enemy criminal faction attacks a civilian location under your protection (extortion on-going), you lose some respect in that area. But if you attack within a short period of time on the criminal family that did that - you'll get a bonus respect from that mission. I'll add it to the list above.

[malberg]

thanks :)
[ i have to say one very important thing : its great that you re here available to help us deal with the small bugs and problems.. it makes a lot of difference to me.. your availability for support is greatly appreciated]

[Julenius]

Thanks. I'm happy to hear that and glad to be of help. :)

[Niinox]

Is there a way to actively upgrade armaments, melee and otherwise? 'Don't shoot first' is a common thing for the cops. But far as I know, my cops aren't armed at all. Which seems... Very out of sorts for the Flying Squad.

[esculapio]

Originally posted by Ryy:

Is there a way to actively upgrade armaments, melee and otherwise? 'Don't shoot first' is a common thing for the cops. But far as I know, my cops aren't armed at all. Which seems... Very out of sorts for the Flying Squad.

Most police officers in England aren't routinely armed.

[Julenius]

You need to get industrial locations to unlock better weaponry. And then to upgrade them to higher level to unlock some more.

Tailors provide some armor and vets some boosters.

You should be able to give basic weaponry at will though to your police units from the beginning. With promotions you'll get access to better weaponry on police campaign.

[Niinox]

Originally posted by esculapio:

Originally posted by Ryy:

Is there a way to actively upgrade armaments, melee and otherwise? 'Don't shoot first' is a common thing for the cops. But far as I know, my cops aren't armed at all. Which seems... Very out of sorts for the Flying Squad.

Most police officers in England aren't routinely armed.

The flying squad, which is rather notorious, is. Has always been, as their mandate is serious robbery/major firearms crime. Everybody in Flying Squad is a certed AFO.

[whitewolf1081]

If I may ask a question, is the "disorientate" status effect permanent with a given fight? because I get one within a few turns in a beat up mission against the piston gang and it stays for the whole mission, I'm not sure if this is a bug or intended. Really enjoying the game otherwise, I'm just curious if this was intentional.

[kitadamaya]

I can no longer place injuries anywhere. Please correct it.

[Platypus]

Originally posted by whitewolf1081:

If I may ask a question, is the "disorientate" status effect permanent with a given fight? because I get one within a few turns in a beat up mission against the piston gang and it stays for the whole mission, I'm not sure if this is a bug or intended. Really enjoying the game otherwise, I'm just curious if this was intentional.

Disoriented is not permanent. If your character is very low on stamina, they will be disoriented until they get more stamina. If the disorientation is caused as a status effect, it will have a cooldown. The longest disorientation comes from headbang skill, and it will last 4 turns. We are considering lowering this amount to 2 turns in an upcoming patch.

Originally posted by kitadamaya:

I can no longer place injuries anywhere. Please correct it.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "placing injuries". Could you explain this issue further?

[kitadamaya]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "placing injuries". Could you explain this issue further?

I emailed [e-mail]. Please confirm.

[Rabid Urko]

Originally posted by esculapio:

Originally posted by Ryy:

Is there a way to actively upgrade armaments, melee and otherwise? 'Don't shoot first' is a common thing for the cops. But far as I know, my cops aren't armed at all. Which seems... Very out of sorts for the Flying Squad.

Most police officers in England aren't routinely armed.

They definately werent in the 60s (im 55 and in UK) and very sparse still thankfully now.

[Niinox]

Originally posted by Rabid Urko:

Originally posted by esculapio:

Most police officers in England aren't routinely armed.

They definately werent in the 60s (im 55 and in UK) and very sparse still thankfully now.

About 17% of officers were armed in the 60s due to police deaths starting with the Derek Bentley case. The Flying Squad, under their mandate at the time which focused on commercial robberies with firearms and organized crime, were routinely armed. At the time, they were known as C.O.8, which was a directorate under the office of the police commissioner, outside the standard police hierarchy. They're now under SCO7, within the Serious & Organized Crime Command of the MPS.

[Rabid Urko]

17% of officers in LONDON had firearms in the 60s :)
London is not the whole of England.