Antistasi is easily my favorite mod in all of Arma 3, especially once you get going and unlock stuff in your arsenal. But how do you get going? Here are a whole bunch of tips for beginners at Antistasi.

1. Location, location, location.
Where your base is plays a huge role in how easy or hard your game will be at the start. Before you pick somewhere else, the default location is really good for a few reasons that will help you pick a good spot:
- It's just far enough away from everything to do stuff. You can't hire units, rest through the night, and so on if there are enemies near your base. This is meant so that you can't just hire a couple million soldiers to defend the base immediately once CSAT shows up, but if you're close to a town, roadblock or outpost then get used to not to anything.
- It's on the south of the island. If you ask for a NATO ammodrop while you're in the north of the island, the helicopter will likely fly up to space to avoid anti-air missiles, and drop the box from space as well. Wind will then blow that box far away from anywhere you want it to be. If you're on the southern end, the NATO heli won't have to fly over half the AAF's outposts to get to you, meaning it won't need to worry about AA, and so on.
- Lots of stuff close by. So much to conquer, so little time, and in practice you can get plenty of diverse missions without having to move around much. Be sure to be near a town or two, as those give plenty of easier missions compared to what being close to a base gives ("Oh hey, first thing, make sure to break into an AAF base and free prisoners").

Note that there are exceptions to this. Starting in the northern mountains gives you a ton of space to not get destroyed by the AAF even if you spend most of your time playing Arma 3: Rally Racer to get from place to place.

2. Get out fast.
Whenever you capture an outpost, clear a roadblock, even just shoot up the patrols outside a town, the AAF sends a response. If you're lucky, said response arrives in a standard transport truck. If you're not, they'll send an APC armed with a cannon. Unless you have good AT with you and feel like waiting around for the counterattack to arrive so you can blow it up before the enemy squad can dismount (xXMLGTitanCompactQuicksc0peXx), load up with what you need to steal the most and leave.

3. Recover your weapons!
Whenever you're done with a fight, grab all the weapons you don't have unlocked in your arsenal and put them in whatever vehicle you have to get away with. At first, prioritize assault rifles, optics like the MRCO, and AT launchers if you can. Trust me, things get way easier once you unlock the Mk20 in your arsenal and all your soldiers start coming equipped with it and you don't have to rely on a 9mm SMG (or an AK, if you use RHS). Other things to get once you have ARs: Grenades, helmets (vests and backpacks seem to have trouble unlocking), the Mk18 marksman rifle (it's accurate, kills in one shot a lot of the time, can pierce through the walls of a house, and can fire full-auto!), and both varieties of the Titan launcher (the AT version can blow up an APC from a kilometer away and the AA comes in handy for attacks, more on those later).

4. M O R T A R S
A static mortar may cause $800 plus $50 for someone to man it, but it's money well spent. You can command the mortar guy to fire on anything within its range (I think it's around 3km but don't quote me!), and mortar rounds can deal with a lot of threats, killing half a squad in one hit and even disabling APCs so that the crew dismount. Just remember that it takes 30 seconds or more for the rounds to hit, and they aren't all too accurate so you'll want to always fire in bursts of 4 rounds for maximum explosions.

5. On Attacks
If you manage to secure an outpost, factory, etc. and blow up whatever reinforcements they send at first, the AAF may just see fit to attack that place. When this happens you will get a notification, and it's prudent to not even try to do anything while attacks are going on. Typically, an attack will consist of APCs and troop trucks along with main battle tanks and an aerial attack. While the air attack isn't all that much (the attack helicopters can barely hit the side of a barn door, let alone you), be warned that a TON of APCs/trucks/tanks will be sent. Think half a dozen. In my experience if you want to repel an attack, you will need your own tank first. Speaking of which..

6. Vehicle recovery
Well, you've made it pretty far! You've got an adequate armory at base and have the spare cash to recruit yourself some extra AI squad members. I'd recommend having a medic and an engineer with you if you can. The engineer is invaluable if you crash a vehicle of yours, and for capturing AAF vehicles. How? Well, you will need a missile launcher for this. It doesn't have to be too good, just enough to disable (not utterly blow up) an APC. To disable an APC, just hit it in such a way that you destroy its wheels/tracks and the crew dismount. Once the crew's dealt with, get your engineer to repair the vehicle. I don't know where the FIA hires its mechanics, but this guy will take a disable APC and repair it to driveability. Get that APC back to base pronto, and heal/repair it. Feel free to put it in your garage for later!
But wait, I said something about capturing tanks last paragraph. What about those? Well, main battle tanks are HARD to kill. It can take a hit from the Titan AT launcher without necessarily being even disabled. In those cases, take a Titan and see if you can blow up one of its tracks and get the crew to dismount. An APC's gun does have armor-piercing rounds that could also do the job, but remember that a tank will have one look at you in an APC and blow you to smithereens in one shot. Of course, once you have a tank you now have something that can disable an APC in one shot with its high-explosive rounds, and blow up just about anything else with ease with its AP rounds.

7. Ammoboxes!
NATO points are very good in the early game for pretty much one purpose: Getting a supply box dropped over you your base. Before you spend your points, though, be sure to accumulate a whole bunch of them. Like, 50.
*waits*
OK, you did it? Just keep doing missions and you'll make it. Now that you have a ton of points, NATO puts more in their supplies, just for you. Instead of one or two of any one gun, you get 5 or more (remember, 10 guns = available in arsenal) per box! Just make sure to have the drop happen far from the coast, and follow the paradrop in a truck of some sort (one that you can transfer an ammobox to, specifically). Note that at 50 points, NATO starts to pack a whole lot of ammo in their trucks, on the order of 100 or more of any given ammo type. Since the time it takes to transfer stuff to a truck depends on how many items there are, be ready to wait for 3 straight minutes while your truck loads. It helps to have a nice playlist going. I recommend the Gun Locker theme from Nuclear Throne.

8. Persistent saves.
Do them. Go to your HQ, open up the game options (interact with the map), and do a persistent save. Do this every so often, once you make good progress like unlocking some cool guns or repelling an AAF attack. You can't rely on regular Arma 3 saves for everything, as while they do work okay, it's possible something can intervene (such as a crash) that will cause Arma 3 to delete all of those saves, leaving out that persistent save. Not to mention, you won't have to start from scratch every time a new version of Antistasi comes out.

Alright, I hope that's enough to get you started! Thank you for sitting through my rambling nonsense.