Campaign Start Guide

A general quick start guide to get a grip on the campaign.

Overview

So I tried the campaign a few times, and ended up getting my back end handed to me. I always seemed to get caught with my pants down and ended up getting romper roomed by something. So I took a step back to see where I was failing. Watched others play the game through youtube and figured I could help others who were as lost as I was when I had started playing. So here goes.

Starting out.

First this guide assumes you know a bit about the game first. If you don't there are a myriad of youtube video tutorials to get you going.

So you start out in campaign, you've got this big ugly fortress of inefficiency and a skiff. Yeah, the skiff. First things first, whenever you scrap something, be it a boat or item or segment from a structure, you get all the resources back it took to build it. You are then able to use those resources on something else.

• Scrap the skiff. (Small boat)
  
  
• Cut off the dock section. Leave enough area in the corner between the ammo store area and resource building to place crystal growers. (See picture below)
  
  
• Start cutting off things you don't need. Gun, beam sections around the motor, radar tower, basically everything you don't need except for the buildings for resource gathering. You can choose to either cut out the ammo barrels and the building protecting it, but I had decided to leave it.
  
  
• Start replacing the engine or upgrading it. The prefab assemblies are your friend, don't be afraid to use them. The engine assembly in the top left corner of prefabs and it's upgrade directly below it are usually my go to builds as it gives me the ability to upgrade when I need more power. Trust me, once you alot of resource gatherers on a fortress you'll need the juice.
  
  
• Build more resource collectors, you really can't have enough early on. You'll though notice as you build more you begin to cut down on how many are available via the resource pool the fortress sits over. My current fortress has very many resource collectors as you'll see in the picture, but I haven't gotten the pool down to zero yet.

This is what I considered a decently productive fortress. "But Gears, where are the guns??"

Look, you don't need guns in the start, you need resources. The faster you get those materials the faster you can build a fleet to take the fight to the DWG, and trust me, few things are more satisfying as crushing DWG into the waves. More on that later. So when a fight is close to approach, and your still have your defenseless fortress, simply take it out of play, it'll only quit producing materials if an enemy blocades it. That brings me to my next point. A fleet.

Starting fleet.

So you have resources rolling in now, you have made it past the two and three resource collector nonsense and you're ready to start building ships. To do so, you need repair tentacles or it's compact cousin, though I stick with the tentacles, at a minimum of four, though more is better. You also need a ship spawner.

Note about ship spawner. From what I can see, the ship spawner only allows for 5 ships from that particular spawner in play at a time. Which for me works out great because I play with 5 ship fleets usually. Once you have 5 ships complete, build a new spawner just don't forget which spawner is for which ships.. (that could get ugly)

So have you designed and tested a combat ship that is reasonably low on mats? No.. well it's ok I have one built and available on workshop.



This is my basic fleet ship, Centurion MK12 It's quick enough for most naval engagements, hits hard enough to take the fight to anything and works great in the 5 ship fleets I had mentioned earlier.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=485931838

Also, you can customize the missile loadouts to what you think would work for you. They're cheap reasonably and make quick work of most ships and airborne threats if utilized correctly. Fleet them together in map mode. Take them out of play, and arrange them in a straight line. Give them space because sometimes the ai likes to do wacky stuff, so they don't accidently hit eachother.



This is a typical out of play fleet formation. To make a fleet, click and drag a box around them and click the merge fleet button in map mode. The ship with the triangle around it is the flagship. There is a button to assign an different flagship in the fleet if need be, it's a flag pole. Now while the ships are out of play you can still move the vessels. But they keep that same fleet formation, so to change the formation itself. Click on a ship that isnt the flag ship and click on an area you want it placed in correspondence to the flagship. Now when you move out of play fleets, you can keep that formation and they will only break it to go into combat, just beware of terrain features, such as mountains and islands etc when creating a fleet layout. Too far and they can't support each other, too close and well the ships play bumper boat when the forces are pulled into play.

Here's the thing about in play, and out of play, only put in play ships that you are currently using, or are modifying though build mode. If you don't need it, take it out of play. You can move entire fleets in out of play mode, it's the same thing the computer does to move it's fleets. Also it stops things from wrecking into each other while they're on standby.

I build 5 ship fleets starting out, once I have the first five ships built and in fleet, I send them out to capture the first resource point. Depending on what's guard the resource point, that may or may not be enough, but I haven't seen much stand up against the 5 ship combo yet.



This is a 12 construct fleet (10 Centurion Ships, 2 Phalanx Missle/Anti Missle boats, and one modified Drake with extra IR missiles on the wings), I used against an 18 ship DWG fleet that had a Riverhome in it. I didn't suffer a single loss in the fight, though some ships were heavily damaged.

When you design your ships, remember to put repair bots and tentacles on it, that way it can repair itself and nearby vessels as well. If you have the resources to keep up repairs, it makes for a force that is extremely hard to break.

That brings me to the point, before you get into a fight, make sure you have resources on hand to repair damaged ships and replenish ammo. Nothing is worse than running out of ammo mid fight because you ran out of metal, or materials to repair a ship in a pitched battle. Don't run yourself out of materials building a fleet to face an enemy, try to have it built before hand.

Also you may need a heavier hitting ship soon, to help with paddleguns, and riverhomes. I personally use my own ship, as it's cheap for the bang it brings.

Enter the Praetorian. A good midsized ship to give your smaller ships some seriously extra punch.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=486370683

Tips.

• Resources make or break a campaign. Think ahead, and plan for the worst. And when in doubt, build more harvesters.
  
  
• Go into the character sheet by hitting escape. Find the button/tab that allows you to put points into miner, as you gain levels, also you can put them into the buff that makes repairs more effiecient. In the beginning, the buffs you gain from miner can be a real help. I know the smg is cool, but it doesn't win wars...
  
  
• Try to build your vessels in the creative ship creation mode. Build to suit resource budget in campaign and a role you need filled in a fleet.
  
  
• Small many ship fleets vs one big hammer. So I see alot of guys build one large all encompassing leviathan of a ship. That doesn't work for me, it only takes one lucky shot to cripple a single ship. Redundancy is your friend. If you lose one ship, it doesn't break the bank if you have a fleet of easily replaceable smaller hard hitting vessels. I'd rather still have 80% combat ability if I lose a single ship, in a five ship fleet, than be crippled by a single lucky missle strike.
  
  
• To save on engine power, keep your fortress just high enough that resource harvesters can do their work. Lifting it up eats up serious engine power, and you wont be able to get the starter fortress high enough to take it out of gun or missle range anyway. It's much safter to just pull it out of play and let your fleet take on the enemy.
  
  
• Once you have a decent starter fortress, that is still relatively cheap to build.. (there was a reason for this lol.) Make sure you're looking at it or on it, and save the construct. Once you capture a new resource zone, put a spawner on your fleet that just capture the area, and build a copy of your fortress there. With that you'll be able to mine resources as soon as it's capture. (The other reason I like repair tentacles on ships, mobile production line.)
  
  
• After you have the first DWG resource zone captured, go ahead and build an antena array on each of your fortresses, build them tall and big. It will help show enemies on approach on the map so you can be better prepared.
  
  
  
  I know it looks silly, but it won't be silly when it lets you know about the massive fleet sent to counterattack the resource zone you just captured.. Yeah it saved me, gave me time to prepare.

Thanks for taking time to review my guide. Forgive any possible grammatical errors, and I will update this if people have questions or tips to add.

[Some Random Dude]

holy moly this is old

[Bofors]

I like how this guide is at the top of the guide list, seen as it was made 4 years ago and not updated

[Campbell Industries]

big balloon antennae systems do seem effective, i like to deploy one at each new fortress i build for a resource zone

[chenzyjerry]

Instead of an antenna array, you could build a ghetto satelite with balloons...

[Typical_Brit]

well done, exelent

[Sgt.Apples]

http://orig15.deviantart.net/6da4/f/2014/118/0/8/megas_xlr_motivational_poster_by_slyboyseth-d7gek84.gif
just do that

[pd_]

Can you still spam recourse collectors like that?

[RichyN25]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=343203745 I suggest using my starting fortress, an old build of mine yes, but it works wonderfully, and after scrapping the starter fort it provides all needed material and much more so that you may start construction immediately on your first vehicle :) (Note: does not include a radar dish <YET> but I'll add one in a future update)

[DraxTemSklounts]

you have to download them and then load them in or spawn them at vehicle spawners. and by download them you have to go the the workshop in FTD and hand pick the things you subscribed to. if you dont want them there anymore you have to hit the trash can button 5 times and then the blueprint will be gone ( if a certain blueprint doesn't work out like you hoped )

[Vagabxnd]

how do i insert workshop ships into my game ?