Abiquiu Path Choices (Spoilers obviosuly)

[Thandrall]

There's been some confusion about the different choices present in Abiquiu, so thought to write out a guide, since I was crazy enough to try out each choice. I won't provided specific locations as none of this is hidden per say.

There are 3 ways of getting the required supplies needed to move on. The Local/legion Outpost, Balzano's base or the Movement Base.

TL;DR:
Attack legion outpost
Attack Movement outpost
Attack Balzano
Help Balzano and attack Movement
Help Balzano then betray him to help movement

After getting the required supplies, you have a few other straight forward missions before getting a choice of pretty much leaving the area, or staying and fighting Legion. Now here is the long part of it all. Which option gives what.

First choice is usually when you go straight forward from the start and meet the W brothers. While you can ask a few questions, the major choice is actually how you act about the Van. They have already looted some fuel and ammo from the vehicle. You can either get them to give it back via dialogue, or let them keep it. If you let them keep it, when you go see Balzano and ask if you can get some help from him, they will join up then and there, giving you a sharpshooter team nice and early.

Second choice is when you go to the sight of the firefight, you meet Mac in his technical. After some talking, you'll be notified on a wolfpack coming in. You can either fight it with him, or retreat. If you fight with him now, you can recruit him later on when you go to the movement camp after talking to the commander.

While this is less of a choice, make sure you exhaust all dialogue options with Kondo, or at least the one that talks about the locals.

Rescue the locals/destroy legion outpost option:
When you talk to Elder Charles, he mentions that he has people who will fight but has no weapons, and that there is a dealer near by you can get weapons from. Said dealer wants a way out of the place in return for the weapons, and will only take a Van.
There are two vans on the map, the one at the beginning with the brothers, and the Movement Outpost also has a Van, though occupied. Giving one to him will give you a Militia Team and a RPG team. Killing the dealer will blow up the house and the weapons.

You can then move up to the Movement outpost, and talk to the commander (now known as MC) there. The dialogue options you have will depend on what you have actually done on the map. I will act each one out on what i have described at this point. Talking to the commander will allow you to request help against the legion outpost, or to say to wait while you think about it.
Along the way to the legion outpost, at a destroyed church (be careful, if you just click over to the outpost, you can miss him, his group starts as just civilians), you can come across a pastor, who was an ex-navy seal, and can either agree with mason or not in recruiting him. He will become a heavy weapons team with a plasma recoilless rifle.

If you request help, he will say he will await your call, and will attack the outpost after you have started shooting at the enemy. Do be careful, the spiders there will utterly ruin the movement troops. Obviously, if you tell him to wait out, you can then go and attack the base on your own.

After taking down the legion outpost, you will get a cutscene and the needed supplies. You will also be prompted to talk to Harry the Mechanic by his sister. If you do so, and talked to Kondo about the locals, where he tells you Harry has a secret elevator, you will be able to get a fully loaded (but rusted, so weaker stats than normal) Styker.

At this point, Kondo will tell everything legion is coming. If you took the base down by yourself, all of the movement forces will retreat (leaving behind a light platform, a nearly empty supply trailer and a full fuel trailer). If you instead requested help from Movement to take down the base, you will get a choice. You can gain roughly half of the movement troops to yourself, but you are forced into fighting legion, or you can reject them and still be able to retreat.

Balzano's base:
Once again there are multiple ways to go about this. When you talk to Balzano, you can tell him you want the resources in the field, and when he says no you can just say you'll take them, starting a fight. If you move into the field and occupy one of the two vehicles there (M112 or the Humvee) he will be agroed as well. Since he does have a Bradley, your pretty much set into the fight.

The main point here is you can ask if there is anything you can do for him, and he will want your help against the movement base (this is also where you can ask for help and get the sharpshooter team). You can then go over to the MC, and you will have 2 new options when you talk to him. Option A is to tell the commander what Balzano plans, or option B is to lure him away as Balzano requests.

Option A: You convince him to go along with your plan, in which you move your forces to the west side of Balzano's base, before radioing in to the MC, where he will look like he is leaving, causing Balzano to attack. The movement forces usually can win against the troops Balzano sends (they have 2 RPG squads, they usually win against the Bradley, since it's rusted) while at the same time you are set to attack Balzano himself. Once he is dead (the mercenary unit acting as him), his troops will all flee (leaving vehicles behind). You then get the mission to go though and garrison the 3 or 4 buildings that makes up his base, which gets you the needed supplies (this is what happens if you straight out fight him as well). Que Kondo saying legion is incoming.

There is a okay chance of the Bradley surviving on fire, or due to pathing issues and luck, you kill Balzano before the Bradley comes under attack from the RPGs, and you can then take it for yourself (remember you need someone with tank training to use it, aka Big Bob or Calderon)

Option B: You tell the MC to go to the Bridge where the firefight at the beginning was. He will take his remaining technical, the van, and the 2 RPG squads over there. Balzano will then attack, and you get another choice. Either help Bally, help the movement, or remain neutral. Remaining neutral seems to do nothing from what I can see, though it might be bugged.
If you help Bally, wipe out the movement troops (for whatever reason, Mac doesn't seem to care about this, and will gladly help kill his former people). Once done, you can then garrison the movement building to get the needed supplies. Kondo talks, legion comes, etc etc.
If you instead help the movement, all you have to do is wipe out the force Balzano sent, which gives you a good opportunity to set the Bradley on fire to get it yourself (one hit from behind with the plasma recoilless will work, same with the SMAW, a full salvo from RPGs from to side usually work to, but actually destroys it if hit from behind). The great thing is when the attacking force is down (but not killing Balzano himself) the entire movement force comes under your command. This is 7 technicians, 2 Militia, 2 RPGs, the technical, the van, and the main tractor at the base and the two trailers, all crewed. You also automatically get their supplies, completing that mission.

Since this is getting so long, I'll put in the second part of the mission in the comments.

[Thandrall]

Part 2: After legion has arrived, and you've provided the distraction for Kondo, you have 2 choices. Either retreat, or fight it out with legion. A side quest of sending someone to go get the rest of your forces will also come up. If you do it straight away, there is a 2 minute wait till they arrive. If you do it after "winning" the map, they turn up instantly.

Option 1: Fight
You will need to hold 4 points which will be marked, and wipe out all Legion forces. Depending on if you set the self-destruction of Haven base yourself or not, depends on the level of forces sent.
You also have the option to retake the movement outpost, which gets a signal off to other movement forces, and if you hold the base for 2 and a half minutes, you'll get an ally come to help out. If for whatever reason you give the base up and Legion takes it back within that time frame, the ally's won't come thinking your dead.

You will be given a main tractor and a full supply trailer if you call the ally's in. After Legion has been destroyed, if Balzano is still around in whatever form, he will then leave the map, leaving behind the Bradley if he still has it. This also allows you to get the two vehicles in the field as well. At some point (I think it's 10 minutes afterwards, but I'm not sure), some scavengers will also come back thinking he's there, see's he's not, but is so scared of him they will then "protect" the field for him.

I will note, at some point, Legion will pretty much bring you an Abrams Tank as well for staying behind.

Option 2: Retreat
You will only have a 4 minute window to do so, and having just 1 unit retreat will mean at the end of that window, the mission is over, anyone who hasn't retreated is, well, dead.
I will point this out now, I spent hours trying to get it work, you can NOT bring your troops in, then get them to the retreat point. I tried, and actually got it so the Humvee hit the retreat box at the 1 second mark, but since they seem to disappear in waves, still didn't get it. This does mean retreating loses all the troops you did not bring with you at the beginning.

The biggest confusion with the retreating, is that if you retreat, you will end up with another mission/map between this one and the Santa Fe Outskirts. Please do note, this will not happen if you requested movement help against the legion outpost, then rejected the movement troops request to fight legion. You will instead half a half heart welcome from Jessica. This mission is required for one of the achievements.

Almighty Cheese time!

This will be about a few little cheeses I have figured out in game. There's not many, with the biggest one being if you time things very carefully, you can get both the stryker and the movement forces. There is a short dialogue before the troops transfer to your command, and when it happens you have about 10-15 seconds to complete the destruction of the legion outpost. Aka, I wiped out everything but 1 homi, then snuck up the sharpshooter team close by with weapons off, moment I won the battle, turn weapons back on, quicksaved just in case, and killed the last one.

Same with the fact you can take out Balzano/movement, but if you don't garrison any of the buildings, you can go off and do something else. Sadly, from what I can see, you can't double up on supplies, I tried (had a little murder time, killed both factions, destroyed the legion outpost, still had the mission to loot the buildings, but there was no dialogue that came up and still only had 200k supplies at the end.)

Lastly, due to the amazing amazing power of the inventory, if you know you are going to retreat, you can take off all the weapons from the troops your leaving behind, and even go so far as to disband them, and you'll still have all of those weapons and the manpower after the mission.

Other than that, it's all normal stuff, make sure to kill vehicles with snipers to try and set them on fire to get them yourself. I can't figure out if Mason talking about combat engineers seeing mines means there's /some/ way to get some, or is just for future knowledge.

The fact by retreating you are giving up the Abrams till like mission 9 I think is up to you if you think it is worth it or not. I have yet to be able to figure out what saving the civilians do if anything.

[HeathenSW]

Was thinking about writing it as well, since I retried this map and santo fe ungodly amount of times.

I never tried to stay independant and then attacking everyone after balzano attacks movement, though. Do you get twice the amount of supplies, or the game triggers Kondo after looting only one place still?

Edit: Ah, you've added this. Many thanks!

[zpc]

Awesome work Thandrall!

[Rin Palora]

A few more bits of minor cheese for the list:
1) if you bring in an ATGM from the start you can clear out the legion forces in the West relatively easy (take out the spiders, kite the homunculi and dogs with the humvee) making for an easier defense.
2) you can rearm your ATGMs for "free" by having them go into the Van you are going to give to the weapons dealer. He doesn't care if you give it to him with no ammo.

food for thought:
- the Rev-6s that bring the Abrams all have miniguns, if you can get another Heavy Weapons team, somehow, you can loot 1 of those for your self. Yes the Pastor can also take them but the plasma recoilless rifle is a lot more expensive and imo important to have,
- I haven't checked all the corpses but there may be a Barret sniper rifles dropped that your snipers can pick up.
- you can rearm your RPG ammo from the dead so you don't spend supplies on it later.

Oh, also, Balzano will show up later and have some part in another mission if he survives.

[RPS 12324]

Another little note for this one mission, make sure at least one technician gain at least 1 veterancy, preferably 2 since mines will also help immensely in the next mission. This allow you to upgrade them to be able to crew tanks and IFVs. Assuming you picked up Bolzano's Bradley, you can buy another Bradley in Taos, but you won't be able to take it if you have nobody that can operate it.

So for min-max:
- Bring at least one infantry and one ATGM team, put rangers to crew the humvee. I you are only bringing 1 infantry squad, make sure it is the one that has the better weapons.
- Be nice to the looters, take the van.
- Help the Mover technical fight off the robots, but keep the ATGM team and riflemen near there.
- Talk to Kondo, this should unshroud much of the map, letting you see some Legion vehicles in the west.
- Use your ATGM team to snipe the Hunter Drone and the 2 Spiders on the west, use the riflemen and humvee to kill any legion infantry that comes for your ATGM team. Pick up the damaged technical there when done, we will come back for the trailer later.
- Talk to Bolzano, exhaust all dialogue option until you can ask for recruit, you will get a sniper squad.
- Talk to the Elder, then bring the van to the arms dealer for some militias. Pick up the trailer and the carriage from the junction with them.
- Talk to the Movement commander, but DO NOT tell them to attack the Legion base just yet.
- Place a squad that can crew vehicles in front of the mechanic's garage.
- Begin to attack the Legion base from the north, but don't go all in yet. You just want to snipe the two Spiders in there either with the ATGM or the Pastor's recoilless gun, but do not wipe out the Legion infantry there yet. Use the vans to reload the heavy weapons, not the ammo trailer.
- When the two Spiders are destroyed, tell the Movement commander to begin the attack, this must be done before you completely clear the base. Only now you should go in and wipe out the remaining Legion in the base. This will trigger the Legion invasion. If you do this, shortly after the invasion begins, some of the Mover units will come to your control.
- Use the squad near the garage to talk to the Mechanic, then have them pick up the Stryker. Move everyone to the area near the house in the southeast corner of the map.
- Wait for Kondo's cue to attack, then try to retake the Movement's base. Beware of the two Spiders in there plus another one that may walk up the ramp, but it is much easier to invade the base from the South. Once the base is clear, put the ATGM squad on the northeasternmost building to pick any Legion vehicles that may come.
- When Kondo comes to your control, have him and the civilians move south to the small path. Send a van to pick them up. In the meantime, help the Movement forces to fight off the remaining Legion, beware of the Revs near the tank. Chances are the hacked tank have already wiped out a lot of Legion, if you didn't destroy the HK Platform and Spiders in the beginning, chances are it is already knocked out at this point.
- Send your tank crews to pick up the tank and the abandoned Bradley. Refuel the tank using the fuel trailer in the Movement's base, not the HEMTT. Fight off Bolzano's goons that are returning then help yourselves with vehicles they left behind. Beware of the mines.

[Falcon_BR]

TWO BRADLEYS!?!?!?
How are you going to pay 8000 upkeep daily?!?!?
Plus the about 80k supplies from going to taos and coming back.

Taos bradley is when you didn't get the bradley from abiquiu, but having two of them is too much.

[HeathenSW]

Originally posted by Falcon_BR:

TWO BRADLEYS!?!?!?
How are you going to pay 8000 upkeep daily?!?!?
Plus the about 80k supplies from going to taos and coming back.

Taos bradley is when you didn't get the bradley from abiquiu, but having two of them is too much.

If you "go naked" (take off all the advanced weapons like barret snipers, cool rpgs, all of the heavy weapons and machine guns from founder infantry) you can loot a lot of stuff from santa fe that will pay for the extra Bradley.
It will be tight though. Could have even 3 Bradley's this way after Tortuga.

[Thandrall]

Originally posted by Rin Palora:

A few more bits of minor cheese for the list:
1) if you bring in an ATGM from the start you can clear out the legion forces in the West relatively easy (take out the spiders, kite the homunculi and dogs with the humvee) making for an easier defense.
2) you can rearm your ATGMs for "free" by having them go into the Van you are going to give to the weapons dealer. He doesn't care if you give it to him with no ammo.

food for thought:
- the Rev-6s that bring the Abrams all have miniguns, if you can get another Heavy Weapons team, somehow, you can loot 1 of those for your self. Yes the Pastor can also take them but the plasma recoilless rifle is a lot more expensive and imo important to have,
- I haven't checked all the corpses but there may be a Barret sniper rifles dropped that your snipers can pick up.
- you can rearm your RPG ammo from the dead so you don't spend supplies on it later.

Oh, also, Balzano will show up later and have some part in another mission if he survives.

The Merc squad will drop a .50 cal, so long as 1 lives it will count as Balzano surviving, and it seems like the sniper is only 4th most wanted (first to drop is the SMAW, then the .50, so killing 2 and they won't pick it up). 2 Homi squads also have SMAWs, and another 2 have the advanced machine guns your founder infantry squads can pick up as well. There are also a lot of normal machine guns that drop from balzano's troops. Lastly, one of the Rev-6 groups (the one near the Abrams) actually have plasma miniguns as well.

That being said, I'll update the list :) I had kept it at just choices for the cheese but this could help out a lot of other people hopefully.

[Thandrall]

Originally posted by HeathenSW:

Originally posted by Falcon_BR:

TWO BRADLEYS!?!?!?
How are you going to pay 8000 upkeep daily?!?!?
Plus the about 80k supplies from going to taos and coming back.

Taos bradley is when you didn't get the bradley from abiquiu, but having two of them is too much.

If you "go naked" (take off all the advanced weapons like barret snipers, cool rpgs, all of the heavy weapons and machine guns from founder infantry) you can loot a lot of stuff from santa fe that will pay for the extra Bradley.
It will be tight though. Could have even 3 Bradley's this way after Tortuga.

If you give the APS to the intergrators in Santa Fe, you can actually go back to Taos and get a 3rd Bradley then.

[Rin Palora]

Originally posted by Thandrall:

Rev-6 groups (the one near the Abrams) actually have plasma miniguns as well.

I could have sworn they only had regular miniguns.
Either I'm misremembering, or it changes depending on who blows up Haven base.

NVM, redid the mission to get ALL of the movement on my side and the stryker (and the cheese worked) and yeah the tank Rev-6 have Heavy Plasma Machineguns

[Rin Palora]

Originally posted by Falcon_BR:

TWO BRADLEYS!?!?!?
How are you going to pay 8000 upkeep daily?!?!?
Plus the about 80k supplies from going to taos and coming back.

Taos bradley is when you didn't get the bradley from abiquiu, but having two of them is too much.

:D that's a good question.

Spend goodwill to buy supplies, get goodwill by selling your weapons. Remember to sell vehicles and squads not disband them/whenever possible (not always possible). Dismiss excess manpower. Always take supplies when given an option.

Your drivers and crews don't need the MP5, your snipers probably not either, do you really need SMAAWs when you are going to find a lot of RPGs? Why even give your heavy weapons squads anything when the M2 .50cal is good all around and you can then use them to loot miniguns and recoilless rifles to sell? If you already have lots of snipers used as crew every one of them can pick up a barret or laser rifle to sell or upgrade your main sniper teams after. Learn how to set vehicles on fire without destroying them so you can crew them later.

There is no time limit once you finish a mission so loot everything, take every vehicle and weapon you can and sell the excess after, rearm your troops from the inventory of the excess you plan on selling so you don't have to spend supplies later to rearm them Note that the ammo on the weapon of a vehicle (and possibly it's fuel, parts and internal ammo) is counted in the goodwill you get for it, haven't done the math to check if it's better to say sell a van with a full TOW than sell the same van and the TOW separately (demounting the weapon will put it's ammo into your supply on a 1:1 ratio, you won't ever lose supply if you demount and remount and resupply a weapon). I quickly did the math and it seems you get the goodwill no matter how you sell it, including for the ammo of the weapon if it had any. The supplies that the ammo represent also goes into the supply stockpile the camp has that you can buy.
Afaik anything you buy can later be sold for the same amount of goodwill (buy an RPG for 100 you can sell it back for 100).

Do you really need that many expensive drivers when you can get cheaper technicians or even cheaper snipers to drive vehicles?

Do you really need humvees when technicals and vans do the same thing only cheaper and the van can also carry 10 ppl?

As another post was saying: do you even need any transports at all? When you can just sneak infantry to safely storm any buildings and you can have a lot of cheap movement infantry for the supply cost of one vehicle? (4 snipers for 1 humvee) ? :D

[Rin Palora]

p.s. has anyone found a way to get your other soldiers in a squad to pickup a better weapon in squads where they can have multiples? For example the snipers can have 2-3 better rifles but in a mission only 1 guy will ever change his weapon, the same 1 guy. So once there is a barret in a squad the rest, despite having the regular rifles, won't go pick up a barret and the same dude will always go try and change his weapon? Same with the Founder Infantry and their AT dudes, only 1 of them will go pickup RPGs or better while the other is happily holding a LAW.

[HeathenSW]

Originally posted by Thandrall:

I will point this out now, I spent hours trying to get it work, you can NOT bring your troops in, then get them to the retreat point. I tried, and actually got it so the Humvee hit the retreat box at the 1 second mark, but since they seem to disappear in waves, still didn't get it.

Sad times. It really seems impossible - I tried my best but couldn't even get to 1 second mark. Many hours of trying were wasted as well.
Tried sending personnel truck to get the most people - it can get to just about 1 screen away from the exit zone.
Tried sending some cars - they are within 5 second till timer runs out.
Cheeseless world tastes so bad :(

[Darth Glorious]

You can get an extra truck if you go full hard ass vs the 2 looters in the beginning of the mission and refuse to return it when Balzano told you to to do under 2 mins.

[Thandrall]

Originally posted by Rin Palora:

Do you really need that many expensive drivers when you can get cheaper technicians or even cheaper snipers to drive vehicles?

In regards to the drivers, they are hands down the best to drive vehicles because of their skills, only they can get the extra movement and extra attack speed for vehicles AFAIK.Sure you got the two heroes, but there's only 2 of them. That being said, yeah they cost so much compared to techies haha.