Survival Guide - Dust Settles: Army

Table of Contents:

Purpose:

	Trained Military (Army):
	Trained military will kill, kill, and kill some more. Then they'll break and burn things. Must be trained in a classroom and housed in a barracks. These units can be assigned weapons for both attacking and defending.

Your army is the part of your population that you train to use to attack other camps and defend your own against attacks. You will use the Classrooms page to train army and officers and the Attack page too set up attacks on other camps, while the Defense page will be used to set up defensive formations and assign defensive weaponry.

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Training Army and Officers:

In order to attack another camp or have any real home defense, you will need to train army units and the officers needed to lead them. You will do this through the Classrooms page, linked on the left control panel. At the top of this page, you will see information regarding your current army size, its competency, and the army training tools. You will be able to see how many people you have available for training, how much space you have left in your barracks, and how much classroom space you have for training. You must have classroom and barracks space available for army as well as enough CEPs to cover the costs in order to train them. You should be aware that changing your army's current staffing either through training or relieving units can have a negative effect on its competency. Once you have assigned army for training it will take 6 days (turns) to complete their training. You can check back on the Classrooms page to see how much longer they have until their training is over.

Officers will also be trained through the Classrooms page. Below the army training queue, you will find the officers training queue. Here you can see how many of each officer type you have and how many you need. Officers must be trained from your army pool. They will require more turns for training and plenty of CEPs, but not having enough officers means weapons production will be decreased by 1/2 and severe reductions in your army's ability in battle, no matter how well armed they are.

Army units can also receive extra training and become special operations officers. Please see the Classrooms page or the special ops page for more information about the limitations on ops training.

Army units can be relieved using the tools on the Attack page. The first queue will be for relieving standard army units and the second one will demote the selected officer type to standard army. You will have to demote your officers and then relieve them in order to turn them back into standard population. To do either of these tasks, enter in the number of units that you want to relieve or demote in the appropriate box, select the officer type if appropriate, and click "Relieve." Be cautious when relieving army units, if you relieve more than 25% of your army at a time, your army competency will suffer.

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Housing Army:

You will need barracks space to house your army. Each barracks will hold up to 50 military units. Since ops and officers are trained from army units, you will not need extra space when you decide to train them, only when you want to train new army units.

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Feeding and Paying Army:

Your army will require two meals each day. Officers will require three meals. Once you have ended 1,000 turns, you will have to begin paying your army units or your population's morale will drop to poor. These guys are risking their lives to make sure that your camp remains safe from attack and retains its superiority over other camps. The least you can do is feed them well and pay them.

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Army Competency:

Army competency is a very important factor in any battle and is even important for your ops missions. This term refers to how well your troops can work together and get along. The higher your army's competency is, the better your troops will perform in battle. For example, an army armed with ~1,000 rifles and Elite competency against an army with ~1,000 rail guns and Unconfident competency will typically stand a pretty decent chance. Competency affects not only your overall attack and defense in battle, but also your accuracy with weapons. During ops missions, your army competency will help or hurt your ability to complete each of the legs of your mission and remain unnoticed. You can check your army's competency level by looking in the "Your Army" box on the Attack or Classrooms pages.

The competency levels that you can achieve are as follows in order from lowest to highest: Disorganized, Unconfident, Green, Competent, Confident, Experienced, Decorated, Veteran, and Elite.

Your army's competency will increase the longer they stay together and the more times you win. Also the greater your victory over another camp in the sense of difficulty, the more your competency will increase. For example, if you take on a larger camp and win, your competency will increase more than winning against a small camp.

Their competency will decrease the more times you lose. The size of the loss will affect how much you lose as well. If you lose to a much larger camp, you are not going to lose as much competency as you will if you lose to a tiny camp.

If you increase your ranks by more than half of the current number, your competency will decrease. This is because you are adding so many people to your ranks that these new people will cause the entire group to have to adjust and relearn how to work together. You will also decrease your army's competency any time you relieve more than 25% of your current forces. By relieving this many people you will create a void that the other troops will have to scramble to refill. This causes problems in teamwork and morale as everyone is not quite sure what role they need to fill.

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Officers:

No army is going to be complete without officers. These men and women are trained to keep order among your troops and to lead them into battle. Without officers, your troops can become confused and lazy, performing very poorly in battle and slacking off on weapons production so that only half of the normal weapons are made. In order to keep your troops organized and ready for anything, you will need to train officers according to the following:

1 Captain for every 500 troops
1 Colonel for every 10,000 troops
1 General for every 100,000 troops

To keep your troops completely organized, you will need to train a new officer every time you reach the halfway point to the next requirement. For example, you will need to train your first Captain when you have 250 army. That captain will cover your forces until you reach 750 total army units.

Once officers are trained, they are removed from your total number of army and are counted separately. This should help you keep better track of your actual troop count. Officers will occupy the same barracks space that they took before and will only eat 3 meals each day.

You must send officers into battle with your troops to keep them organized, but be careful how many you actually send. If you send too many officers, they will argue the entire time, though too few will leave your army disorganized. Either way will cause a severe drop in your army's abilities during battle. Officers will not fight during the battle, though they can be killed. Instead their entire purpose is to keep your troops in line.

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Army Functions:

Your army has three basic functions in your camp, attacking other camps, defending your own, and producing weapons. The only other function army units serve is to help escort or attack aid caravans between allied camps.

In battle, your army units will fly planes, drive vehicles, or just march in carrying weapons to face the opposing forces on the battlefield and attempt to defeat them. They will fight with whatever formation has been assigned to them and the attacking army will either fight until the conditions of their rules of engagement have been met, or until the defending army has been defeated. You can only attack another camp using army and you can only win a battle defensively if your army defeats theirs. Keeping a sufficient force around for attack and defense is a very good idea. Remember, army units will not be required to man your active defensive structures. Anti-tank cannons and antiaircraft guns will be manned by militia.

During most of the day, your army and even your ops units will help to produce standard weaponry. Each filled barracks can produce long-range, short-range, and heavy weapons depending on research and resource availability. Unfilled barracks will produce nothing. Army will not construct vehicles, aircraft, or defensive structures. Standard population will work on vehicles and aircraft in your garages, while militia will work on the defensive structures.

Because sending aid between camps can be treacherous, alliances will need to keep a pool of troops and weapons for escorting caravans between camps. These troops will help fight off attacking forces from an enemy alliance or random marauders. Of course, your alliance can also keep a contingent of donated troops for raiding your enemies' caravans.

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Improvements:

By researching Coercion, Weapon Design, and Military Tactics, you can improve your attack power. Military Tactics will have the highest effect on the overall battle, but Weapon Design will greatly improve, not only the types of weapons you can build, but also their accuracy values. You can research Recreation for an overall defense bonus.

Your army's competency will have a major effect on your battles with a greater competency giving you a greater boost. Competency will improve your overall attack values and your troops' accuracy.

Launching a Standard Assault is a safe bet to use against any defensive formation, since it has no disadvantage against any of them, but it will also give you no advantage. The Flanking Maneuver will give you an advantage on the Proactive defense, but has a disadvantage against the Distributed Defense. Ranged Fire Primary will have an advantage against the Distributed Defense, but will be disadvantaged against the Proactive defense. A Forward Concentration defense is the standby defensive formation.

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Limitations:

You will only be able to attack a camp with your army 3 times during any 24 hour (real time) period at most. You will be able to launch special ops and air raids as well, taking the number of attacks by you on any given camp up to a possible 9 in any 24 hour period, unless they enter Cool Down during one of these attacks or reach one of the other two limiters, 15 total attacks in 24 hours or 10 total army attacks in 24 hours. Once all of these attacks have been launched, you will have to wait until the 24 hour period is over to attack that person again. If the person enters Cool Down during this 24 period and is not out by the time you can attack them again, you will not be able to attack them until their Cool Down period is over.

Any time you send out your army, they will be gone for a total of 6 days (turns), leaving your camp protected only by the army that was not sent out and your militia. You will also have less weaponry, since all of the weapons that your army takes with them will be away from your camp as well.

Any army that is sent out on an attack will not be available to protect your camp. This will leave you with very limited defenses in comparison. Whenever you send out an attack, make sure that you have your army back before you log off if possible so you will not be left defenseless.

You will only be able to train 1 set of army units at a time, though you can train multiple officer groups at a time. Training will be paused whenever your troops are out for an attack.

Your army will not produce weapons from unfilled barracks and will only produce 1/2 the standard amount if you do not have enough officers.

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