Voxel Turf Basics

This game seem really simple from the screenshots but it has a lot of systems and they can be confusing and frustrating. This guide is to make it less so.

Game Modes

Tutorial- Goes over basic mechanics such as block placement, weapon modifications, and mission acquisition and completion.
Build - Open land where you have infinite telebuy money.
Turf - "Default" game mode. You spawn into a city with 4 AI and have no real pressure as they can't pick fights with you.
Turf Zero - You spawn into an empty world with a lot of money and reduced construction cost. You need to build or zone everything.
Strategy - You spawn into a city with tons of AI and they can and will pick fights with you. This mode can be difficult and requires you to take a more calculated approach.

Game Mechanics

The basic premise of the game is that you are plopped into the city and you have to make your way. There are a few ways to do this, the vast majority of them require doing missions and a lot of them require killing bandits. You get cash, reputation and experience for completing these activities. Reputation and experience are gained at the same rate, but if you have a modifier to Reputation it won't affect your experience gain.

Cash - Is used for buying properties, zoning lots and buying various items.
Reputation - Influences income, zoning, diplomacy, and protection racketeering
Experience - Levels you up when acquired, used to upgrade stats.

You get these while other players and AI are getting them and ultimately try to outpace the ones that are your enemies. You can wage war and capture bases as well to compete.

In the turf mode, you can ignore all of that and fight the AI whenever you want if you even want to at all.

General Recommendations

Point to everything to read the tooltip. - There is a lot going on in the game and if you don't take the time to learn it will make it less fun overall.
Try every mission type - The urgent bandit ones are very tough when you first start. So its good to try some others missions so that you can get a bearing.
Do the architect missions and save a template of your building. - Not only does it help with future ones but it also makes the game more interesting when you start bringing them into online games.
Use cover and distance with bandits- Bandits can kill you very quickly, you need to be strategic when fighting them or you will die which is never fun.
Be smart placing bases - Don't create and destroy bases frequently as it destroys your reputation, also try to place you bases in areas where you intend to be active as it is one of the few ways to heal in the game.
Use healing items - Don't be shy about buying healing items. They can save your life and that saves you reputation and money.
Level up bandit bases but not beyond your skill level. - Raiding bandit bases is a great way to get weapons and reputation. If you abandon them, they level up and restock loot. They can go up to level 5 and generally are really hard on level 3 and up. You can also capture them and make one your base. Or you can just snipe the inhabitants over and over for reputation and minor amounts of cash.
Wear armor- Having an extra damage resistance and being less likely to die is always good.
Don't rob your own buildings- It can be tempting to rob your own buildings but it will cost you. You are better off robbing your enemies buildings or using worst case robbing a protection racketeered building as you will reduce the security rating.

Multiplayer

This game is a lot more fun playing with others and there are even incentives to do so. The first thing to do is make sure your game allows you to host or connect to a server. If you try to host a server and your friend can't connect you may need to forward your ports. The ports this game uses are:
5728 udp server
6000-7000 udp client

There was recently a patch that made the rewards in multiplayer a little lower. Before by playing multiplayer everyone got the full rewards. Now they scale with the following formula(taken from patch notes)
CoOp mission rewards now scale with the amount of players doing them.
Mission Cash reward is now multiplied by 1.5/numberOfPlayersEverParticipated (for numberOfPlayersEverParticipated >= 2)
Mission Reputation & Exp reward is now multiplied by 2.0/numberOfPlayersEverParticipated (for numberOfPlayersEverParticipated >= 2)

What this means is that 2 players doing missions seperately will gain 1.5x the amount of money, and 2x as much respect and xp. If you do missions together you will take a cash hit but not an experience hit. It doesn't really matter though as co op makes harder missions much easier to do and harder missions are much more rewarding in general.

Aside from that, doing missions in co op grants additional lives, so for missions where you might be prone to die, it will make it much easier to survive overall.

Diplomatic Actions

The way you can complete diplomatic action is to bring up the menu(default key: tab) this is the same button you use to bring up the wheel for missions.

Once you select diplomatic actions, you will see AI and other players. When you select on them there are a few actions you can perform.



You can start a turf war, which brings up the base capture game, where you defend your bases and they attack yours in waves. You can run to their base and capture it, similar to a bandit base. You kill everyone in it and then you will capture by outnumbering the mobs.

You can offer an alliance, you have to have a high enough relationship with the AI to do this. This helps significantly in the base capture/defense minigame.

Show respect, Sacrifice respect for relationship. Very useful for forming alliances.

Send Money. - Send money to another faction. Does not seem to influence AI very much. You are better off showing respect. You can share money with friends though.

Issue Warning - Threaten another faction. If they go to war, you are pledging to be a defender against them. This is great given the aggression mechanic.

Lastly there is the aggression stat, when you attack other people, you generate aggression. Aggression lowers your income and makes it so others can attack you with little penalty. AI players will issue warning whenever you generate aggression which will make capturing bases harder if you are too aggressive.

Goons

One thing you are able to do is hire goons for your voxel turf needs.

You can hire goons at bases when fortifying and then talk to them to have them follow you.

Perks & Stats

Perks

Perks are a great way to define how your character plays. They really do make a huge difference which creates an added layer of depth. I've also taken these from the player perks scripts.

"HP Boost" - "Increases HP by 20%" - Good synergy with blood and money, take with 3 points in con if you want a ton of health early.
"Blastproof" - "Reduces explosive splash damage received by 50%" - Can save you from death but pricy for the opportunity cost.
"Bullet Hell" - "Increases damage dealt by 10%" - Take with 3 points in atk for 20% increase. Its alright but using the right weapons is far more important.
"CDF Connections" - "Immunity to minor crimes (Reckless Weapon Discharge, Hijacking, Vehicular Assault) when in range of a base" - A fun one if you like running people over, stealing vehicles, and shooting random people. Losing the CDF grants good xp so I wouldn't suggest it.
"Scorched Defence" - "+1 Attrition to Enemies in your Bases" - Awesome in multiplayer. Healing is already hard to come by and this is devastating.
"Negotiator" - "+33% Income from Missions" - The best income perk. It is great if you like to do lots of missions.
"Charmer" - "+20% Reputation Gain" - It is good for showing respect to AI and protection racketeering. It is a great choice.
"The Art of Bull" - "+100% Aggression Decay" - Good in pvp mulitplayer and Strategy mode.
"Wide Focus" - "+2 Bases" - Unneccessary as you can with good planning, increase income fast enough to unlock new bases without needing this.
"The Finest of Goons" - "+30% Hired Goon atk/def" - Makes a difference on defense. I found Scorched defense more effective.
"Scavenger" - "Killed bandits drop +500% more cash and have a chance to drop valuable items or additional cash drops" - If you like grinding on bandits, this is a great pick.
"Missiles from the Aether" - "If you have a Rocket Launcher equipped you will recieve a free rocket every 30 seconds (max 16)" - This is fun to play around with but there are better alternatives.
"Blood and Money" - "Killing a bandit heals you and nearby allies. Restores 5% HP. Killed bandits have an extra money drop" - Very good for bandit killing missions, very good for bandit base captures, and very good combined with health increases for supreme tankiness.
"Small Town Mayor" - "Get a ramping income bonus and a construction and lot zoning discount if the total world population is less than 1,000. Max +25% income bonus and 35% discount at 0 population" - It is good when the condition is true but given it will always become not true at some point, not great given the 30 reputation penalty for dropping a perk.
"Residential Focus" - "+4 Residential Desirability" - take 3 accumen instead
"Industrial Focus" - "+4 Industrial Desirability" - take 3 accumen instead
"Commercial Focus" - "+4 Commercial Desirability" - take 3 accumen instead
"Office Focus" - "+4 Office Desirability" take 3 accumen instead

As for suggestions here, I would always take at least two perks given at that point perks are cheaper than comparable bonuses from stat gains. What you will want is mostly dependent on what you enjoy doing and what is available. If you are playing turf and there are tons of unracketeered buildings, it probably is worth taking charmer for extra rep. The extra income adds up very quickly. However, if you really get enjoyment from the on foot action, I would suggest Blood and money as the first perk pick. As part of that gameplay, you will want to take bandit bases for upgraded weapons and armor and this makes it easier. Once you get golden weapons with golden weapon mods, you will be unstoppable which is satisfying. For pure money, you can go negotiator instead or as your second pick as it stays viable for the entire game and will result in significantly higher cash gains throughout your play time.

Stats

There are a decent number of stats.They function as follows.
Con - Constitiution, increase your health and makes you more tanky
Atk - Attack, increases your damage and makes you more lethal
Def - Defense - Reduces damage recieved makes you more tanky as well
Acc- Accumen - Increases your income.
Alr - Allure - Unlocks new perks at 4,9,16,25,36,49,64,81,100

You get 1 stat point for the first 5 levels and then 2 stat points for each following level.
The stats give diminishing returns, so you can try to spread it out or go full force into one stat. I'd say go for 4 allure for 2 perks and then start taking some other stats. I personally always take con for 3 points and def for 3 points after getting to 4 allure.

Missions

There are a few different types of missions in the game depending on the type of activity you wish to perform.
They are:
Ambulence Missions - you drive around to various map points to pick up injured people and then drive them back to the hospital.
CDF attack missions - You meet the anarchist and are a bad guy and you kill cops and steal vehicles and reduce safety ratings.
Heist missions - You meet the schemer, and rob various places for money.
Bandit killing missions - You kill bandits that are robbing various places.
Bandit revenge missions - You meet the griever and turn it bandit dog tags.
Mole missions- Modifications of other missions. You do them to gain reputation and hurt AI reputations.
Vehicle stealing missions - You steal vehicles for the mechanic.
Racing missions - You do street races for money.

Mission triggers

The missions have a chance to become available but there are some things I've found are needed. This section will be incomplete as I gather data.

Ambulence Mission - Require a hospital.
Vehicle stealing missions - Require a vehicle garage/mechanic.
Bandits in the hopital- requires a hospital
Bandits in the department store - requires a department store
Stealing antique currency - requires a gun store
Stealing jewelry - Requires a jewelry store
Bank Robbery - Requires a bank(repeatable)

Economy

Demand/Supply

On your map if you can see the supply and demand for a resident type as well as the current population. This has a serious effect of building income as a building with 1/3 of the population generates 1/3 of the income.

Industry generates Residential demand. As a result you generally want to create industry first to create demand and then residential to stock them with population. Industry decreases the attractiveness for residents so if possible, it's better to keep them seperate.

Security

Buildings have a security rating that depletes as crimes are commited in the area. This has a negative effect on income and if the building becomes abandoned or not. You don't want this to happen as it will destroy your income and most likely be a loss.

Aggression

Fighting other players/AI will generate aggression which reduces your income. Don't get too violent and it will decay to 0.

Desirability impact

Based on the script for Economy the following factors affect house building desirability. Desirablity affects income significantly so its best to create a town that factors in these details. If desirability is negative, it also will prevent people from moving in.
"No Road Access" -100% income
"No Nearby Base" -100% income
"Near Hills" +3% income
"Near Water" +4% income
"Near Groceries" +4% income
"Near Goods" +3% income
"Near Entertainment" +2% income
"Near Services" +1% income
"Residential Area" +4% income
"Near Industry" -3% income
"Near Education" +4% income
"Near Health" +4% income
"Near Parks" +4% income
"Beautification" +12% income

Industry Desirability
"No Road Access" -100% income
"No Nearby Base" -100% income
"Near Highway" +4% income

Office Desirability
"No Road Access" -100% income
"No Nearby Base" -100% income
"Near Hills" +2% income
"Near Water" +4% income
"Near Groceries" +1% income
"Near Goods" +1% income
"Near Entertainment" +2% income
"Near Services" +2%income
"Office Area" +4% income
"Near Industry" -2% income
"Near Parking" +3% income
"Near Parks" +1% income
"Beautification" +12% income

Commercial Desirability
"No Road Access" -100% income
"No Nearby Base" -100% income
"Near Hills" +1% income
"Near Water" +1% income
"Commercial Area" +4% income
"Near Parking" +6% income
"Near Parks" +4% income
"Beautification" +12% income

Weapons, and Weapon Mods

I apologize if I'm missing anything from this section. I can only provide observations on things I have witnessed personally.

Weapons

There are a few weapons in this game. Each have their own uses and preferred mods.
Each also comes in 3 tiers, stardard(black line), silver, and gold. Silver is better, gold is best. You can only get higher tiers from easter eggs in special buildings or powering up bandit bases.

Handgun - Each bullet is $1. This is cheap. It reloads fast and shoots fast but has small clips. It has short to medium range and decent accuracy. I use this pick off bandits at medium range and it works well. Has a penalty against vehicles.

Assault Rifle - Each bullet is $2. This weapon has armor penetration built in, it fires fast, has a medium clip and long reload speed. It has decent damage on its own. From my experience it is best when modded with armor penetration and a scope for accuracy as it has a very good range. You can shred helicopters and tanks with the Gold version modded with Gold Armor piercing.

SMG - Each bullet is $1.50. Has a large ammo clip and stack, each bullet is weaker than the handgun but it can push a lot of bullets out. Explosive bullets work well as they are based on chance per bullet and this thing can fire 16 bullets a second. It has a short range and low accuracy. Because of the accuracy, I usually use the scope to control the spread.

Shotgun - Each bullet is $2. Each clip has 4 bullets. It doesn't fire fast or load fast. Each bullet isn't especially powerful. So why use it? Each bullet fires 4 shots and it does 2x damage in close range. Also combined with the explosive mod(which has an obnoxiously high chance of triggering with this) it's almost always going to trigger(2-4 explosions a shot with the gold version)an explosion which from my experience instant kills npcs.

Rifle - Each bullet is $4. It has a small ammo clip and a medium reload time. Each bullet does about twice the damage of the next best weapon and the range on it is long. It has a small amount of armor penetration as well. I usually use it with a scope since it actually has the range to make use of it and armor piercing to increase damage. Since it fires slowly the synergy with the explosive mod isn't super high. When set up well, tends to one shot bandits. I believe there to be better options.

Weapon Mods

Weapon mods come in tiers in this game as well.The same rules apply.
Silencer - Makes it so you can shoot guys without angering other guys. Also reduces the damage on your weapon. I've never personally found this mod useful but I've tried.
Scope - Increase accuracy and adds a scope to your weapon. I use this on the rifle, the shotgun, the smg, and the assault rifle. It allows you to land a lot more shots which can be vital when killing bandits before the dreaded reload.
Armor Piercing - Increases damage and increases armor piercing. I put this on my assault rifle and use it to melt every type of vehicle. It is extremely effective given the built in piercing.
Explosive mod - Very effective on the shotgun and SMG. The gold version has a 70% chance with a shotgun. It doesn't work with armor piercing so you have to chose. If you aren't melting cars, its a solid choice.
Extra shot - Makes your gun fire 2 shots at once. Can be used twice to fire 3 shots at once. It applies a multitude of penalties to counteract the extra damage you will do. It increases your reload time by 1.5x, reduces your accuracy, and reduces you damage by .8x. I personally dislike this mod as you will need to reload 2-3x more often and you have tons of penalties. Most useful with a smg with the explosive mod for insane burst damage(32 shots per second, a short-medium reload speed)

Tooltips from game files

I took some tooltips from the game files. This is mainly just as a reference for someone who wants to read about how things work while outside of the game.

Lot Tooltips

VACANT - Can be purchased and converted to a Player Base, or built upon and converted into an economic building (a house/business/etc).
BASE - Act as a respawn point. Friendly players will auto-heal here. Can hire defenders to fortify the base. Needed to build and collect real estate investment income nearby. The CDF will turn a blind eye to minor crimes in lots adjacent to this.
SERVER_SPAWN - Respawn point that can be used by all players. Players will auto heal here.
HILLS - Expensive to buy and place buildings on. Needed by Sawmills to generate income. Increases desirability of nearby Houses, Businesses and Offices.
SEA - Expensive to buy and place buildings on. Cannot build roads on this - Increases desirability of nearby Houses, Businesses and Offices.
PARK - Increases desirability of nearby Houses, Businesses and Offices.
MOB_BASE - Hostile Bandits live here. Attacking, occupying and releasing the base will make bandits tougher, and spawn better loot here. Bandits will keep spawning if there are no players in the lot.
HOUSE - Generates investment income. Requires Residential Demand to become populated. Increase demand by building more Industry, Commerce and Offices. Acts as a source of customers for nearby Commerce.
COMMERCE - Generates investment income. Requires residential buildings in catchment area to generate income. Similar businesses compete with each other. For example, Goods/Weapons and Goods/Jewelry will split their customer base (some will go to the first, some to the second, some to both). Different businesses types do NOT compete - Groceries/Supermarket and Goods/Clothes have separate customer pools!
INDUSTRY - Generates investment income. No demand requirements, just build where profitable!
OFFICE - Generates investment income. Requires Office Demand to become populated. Increase demand by building more Commerce and Industry! Office demand also scales with city size
SPECIAL - Grants a bonus to the player who owns this

ZONED_RESIDENTIAL - Zoned lots have a chance for buildings to develop - These buildings will then become racketeered by the owner
INDUSTY - Zoned lots have a chance for buildings to develop - These buildings will then become racketeered by the owner
COMMERCE - Zoned lots have a chance for buildings to develop - These buildings will then become racketeered by the owner
OFFICE - Zoned lots have a chance for buildings to develop - These buildings will then become racketeered by the owner

Lot detail tooltips

DESIRABILITY - Desirability increases the income that a lot produces.\\n- Houses and offices with higher desirability are more likely to attract tenants.\\n- A lot must have positive desirability to be populated.
SAFETY - Safety Rating acts as a multiplier for lot income.\\n- It decreases if crimes are committed nearby and recovers over time.\\n- If Safety rating drops below 25 the lot will be abandoned.
INCOME - How much income this lot produces every hour
INCOME_RACKETEER - How much income this lot produces every hour. Protection racketeering uses the racketeer's aggression and reputation.
EXPENSES - How much this lot costs in upkeep every hour.
BASE_EXPENSES - How much this lot costs in upkeep every day. Expenses are paid in hourly instalments.
POPULATION - How many people live/work here
CUSTOMER_BASE - How many residents live in the catchment area of this business. This is reduced by competition by other businesses. Businesses with larger customer bases have more pull than smaller businesses.
BUISNESS_TYPE - Used to determine what businesses this competes with.\\n- Businesses of the same category split the customer base between them

Lot action tooltips

CONVERT_TO_BASE - Converts this lot to a Player Base. Player Bases: Act as a respawn point Friendly players will auto-heal here. Can hire defenders to fortify the base. Needed to build and collect real estate investment income nearby.
CONVERT_CUSTOM - Converts this lot into a House, Commerce, Industrial or Office lot. Use this to convert hand built lots into economic lots.
CUSTOM - Converts this back into a vacant lot.
INCREASE_FORTIFICATION - Hire more goons to defend your base.
DECREASE_FORTIFICATION - Dismiss hired goons to save money.
INSURE - Insuring a lot allows you to repair any damaged dealt to it for a small fee.
REPAIR - Repair a lot restores it to its previously insured state.
_PROTECTION_RACKETEER - Allows you to collect some income from the lot under the guise of protecting them. This costs reputation to do so. You do NOT have complete control over the lot, someone else can buy it and take control of it.
SAVE_TEMPLATE - Saves this lot as a template file which will allow you to build copies of this.
IS_TEMPLATE - This lot is a template lot. A player has built this building and saved it as a template which allows them to build copies of this.
POP_CHANCE - This is the chance per hour that a building will be developed on this zone. This has no effect if there are no legal buildings to place here.

Conclusion

I hope this guide has helped. If there is anything you would like to see added. I would be happy to add it.

[󠀡󠀡]

epic

[SnapperTheTwig]

@jschultz199
Hire goons at bases. (Click fortify base). This is expensive early-game.

To get goons to follow you talk to them

[jschultz199]

where to get goons

[Pigeon]

If you have enough population (500+ residential) you unlock anarchist

Bandit killing missions are always unlocked ( need one house)
Bandit attacks always exist ( need one business not junkyard)

Racing missions I believe might need mechanic or car lot otherwise amount of road or population

Mole I believe requires an other gang to exist

Building custom lots always trigger though small pop or poorer player cause less networth buildings

[alemismun]

BTW can you recruit people into your gang? (as in NPC allies)

[alemismun]

I see.

[Mazzle Dazzle]

There are a few. If you are at the last location they saw you, if they can see you right now, and if a sufficient amount of time has passed.

[alemismun]

what do the icons on the police mean?
I have been hideing from the police for like 4 mins now and they still are there waiting, even tough they cant see me.

[Daniel]

Thanks for the guide.
@Anamal Guide for exploits, are you kidding me?

[Mazzle Dazzle]

It should save automatically periodically and when you quit the server.