Survival Guide - Dust Settles: Training Military

Table of Contents:

Purpose:

You cannot have a true military with any ability to use weapons, especially things like tanks, planes, and other large and heavy weaponry without at least some training. Beyond that having officers to help keep your common army organized and special ops to send on raids, will require more training. You can't just send a common civilian through the same amount of training that it takes to train them into a standard army unit and expect them to be ready to take on the role of an officer or special ops unit. Officers and special ops must be trained from already trained army units. Militia are civilians and will be assigned for training through the Defense page. Use the Attack page or the special ops page to relieve or demote units as needed.

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How to Open:

You will open the ability to build classrooms by researching both Recreation and Marketing to at least 10. Once you have done this and built at least 1 active classroom (remember they need power), you can begin training army.

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Location:

You will train army using the tools in the Classrooms page found on your left control panel. This link will remain inactive until you have your first classroom constructed.

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Training Army:

At the top of this page, you will see information regarding your current army size, its competency, and the queue for assigning training. 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. It will cost you 1 CEP for every army unit that you want to train. In order to set people for training, you will have to have enough classroom space, barracks space, available population, and CEP to cover the number of people that you want to assign. If any one of these falls short, you will not be able to assign those people for training. Also, while you are training army, keep in mind the possible competency drop if you assign too many civilians for training as well as the officer requirements to keep your troops organized.

Once you are ready, you will enter the number of units you want to train in the text box under "Train Standard Army" and click "Train". If you need to relieve army units for use elsewhere, you will need to go to the Attack page. Be sure to keep in mind that each army unit will take 2 units of food each day.

Once you have set a group of army for training, your assignment tools will be replaced with a message reminding you that you can only train one set of army at a time. Basically you should set as many people for training as you want/can afford to train at once. Then prepare to not be able to start another training group until after the 6 turns required for that training have passed.

At the bottom of the Classrooms page (and the Defense page), you will see a table similar to the image above. If you have not assigned any of a given military type or militia for training, the table will be empty or will only display the groups that you have assigned. Army training, no matter the size of the group, will always take 6 days. You can cancel these training orders at any time during these 6 days. When you decide to reassign a training group, you will have to restart from scratch, though. Your army will become available for use as army once their training is over. Until then, those units will not be available for any other use. You will be notified in your end turn notice when your army training is complete. If you send out any sort of attack, including an ops raid or a bombing run, your training will be paused until the remaining units return.

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Training Officers:

One thing that will inhibit the number of people that you can train as army is the requirement for officers to keep your troops in order. In order to keep up weapons production and to prevent mutiny during battle, you will have to train 1 Captain for every 500 troops, 1 Colonel for every 10,000 troops, and 1 General for every 100,000 troops. Having a colonel or general does NOT take the place of the lower officers. You must have all officers if you have enough army to require them. (Basically, by the time you are training a general you should have and keep the 10 colonels and 200 captains 100,000 troops require.) In order to keep yourself truly covered, you will have to train a new officer each time you pass the halfway point to the next requirement, i.e. at 250 army, you will need to train your first captain. This captain will cover your army until you reach 750 total units.

Training an officer takes quite a bit more resources and time than training a standard army unit. First, you must train an army unit into an officer, not a civilian. Next each level of officer requires a different amount of CEP and turns to train. Captains will take 10 CEP apiece and 10 turns. Colonels will require 50 CEP apiece and 14 turns. Generals will take 100 CEP apiece and 18 turns. Each officer will also eat 3 units of food per day instead of the standard 2 for other army units.

When you get ready to train officers for your army, you can check in the selection box for the officers' training queue to see how many your camp needs. You can train up to the number of officers you would need for 100% of your army and civilian population, were they all trained army, so that you can keep extra around in case of assassinations and death in battle. Officers will only ever carry special pistols that they are assigned in training into battle. (You cannot assign different weapons to your officers.) Once you have decided how many you want to train, you will enter the number in the text box. As long as you have enough classroom space and CEP to cover the training requirements, those army units will be set for promotion. Because your officer requirements may change at any time, you can assign multiple officer training groups at once. This will help if some or all of your officers are killed in a battle or assassinated, leaving a number of army units without a leader.

As with any other training queue you set, you can check the details about your officers' training at the bottom of the Classrooms page. The table will show you how many officers you have assigned for training and how much longer those officers have before their training is complete. You can use this table to cancel their training at any time if you so desire.

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Training Special Ops:

In order to have special operations officers that you can use to attack another camp, you must train them. Special Ops are specially trained, elite soldiers. Due to this and the nature of their missions, you will only be able to train a very limited number of special ops. You can train 1 special ops unit for every 1,000 army units as long as your army competency is Veteran or better. The number of army required does NOT include officers. This means that to build your first ops unit, you should have trained a total of 1,003 army units, 1,000 for army, 2 for officers, and 1 for ops. Though you must continue building up your army in order to create new ops, your ops will not be relieved if your total army drops below the standard requirement. You just won't be able to train more.

Below the text box where you will enter the number of ops for training, you can see how many army units you can assign and how much classroom space is available. Since each ops unit will also require 50 CEP for training, your limit will be based on which of the requirements you have the least of (usually trainable army). Ops training will take 6 days. Once you have a set of ops units assigned for training, you will not be able to assign a new group until the training is complete.

Once you have assigned people for training you will be able to check back on the Classrooms page to see how much longer those people will be in training. It takes 6 days to train any amount of army into special operations officers. During that period of time, these people will not be available for any use. You can cancel the training orders at any time, but you will have to restart the 6 days if you decide to reassign them. You will need to use the Special Ops page to relieve any special ops that you want to.

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Improvements:

You can increase the number of army, officer units, and special ops that you can train in each classroom by researching Time Management. This will not increase the number of ops units that can be trained due to army totals, only how many ops units a classroom will hold at a time.

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Limitations:

Your primary limitations for all three training types will be classroom space, available people, and CEP requirements.

Barracks space will be a concern when training army, but training ops and officers only converts army units into one of those, thus no new barracks space will be needed.

Ops units have the most stringent limitations for training since you must have 1,000 standard army units with a competency of at least Veteran for each ops unit that you train. Officers have slightly less restrictive limits in that you can train as many officers as would be needed to cover your entire army and civilian population if all were trained as army.

Your other limitations will lie in the fact that you cannot train more than one group of army or ops at a time and that you cannot train new army units while others are out attacking through air or normal battle. Once you have assigned, say, an army group for training, you will not be able to assign another until you cancel that first one or until it has finished. You can train an ops group and an army group at the same time, though. Any training that is going on when you send out a battle or air raid will halt for the turn or turns that those army are out of your camp. Training will resume once they are back.

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