Guides

The developer calls artillery “a kind of ultimatum force” and names exactly three answers to it. Past a certain range it cannot aim on its own — a squad of spotters does it, and that squad is the most fragile link in the chain.

Buildings placed in a row link up and pay you for it. The developer calls it a production discount and says it “helps a lot with macro gameplay” — and nothing on screen asks you to do it.

Every weapon in Dust Front carries three separate damage values — one against infantry, one against vehicles, one against buildings. They are not scaled versions of each other, and some units are twenty times better at one job than another.

Everything on this site is measured from the demo. The developer has said in writing that the full game will contain units and mechanics the demo does not — here is exactly what he has committed to, and what he has not.

Twenty-eight of the demo’s units carry the directional-armour flag. For those whose front armour is thicker than their rear armour, turning around to retreat swaps the strong face for the weak one — which is why the retreat often costs more than the fight did.

The demo carries thirty-nine upgrades, and the files sort them into two families with an explicit flag. One family is cheap, quick and attached to a unit. The other is expensive, instant on paper, and sometimes costs you army.

The developer’s announcements name three sides. The demo’s files hold four. The extra one has thirteen entries, a name, an emblem and a motto — and not a single combat statistic anywhere in the build.

The developer published three tips with the demo, and they are not filler — each one names a way people lose. Here they are, with what the game files say behind them.

The full game is a campaign on a global map, and the demo has none of it. But the build records it in detail — the income of every strategic building, the price of a nuclear strike, and the one rule that limits how often you may attack.

A Dust Front squad is one unit, not a group of soldiers. Losing men does not cost you damage — with one exception the developer spelled out, and it is the exception that decides fights. And the files now say how many men each squad has, which turns that exception from a rule into a number.

Each faction has macro buildings; the one you play has three. They upgrade your whole army from a structure rather than a menu — and the developer explained why they work that way.

Twenty modules ship with the demo. Three of them are a straight gain. The others record a trade-off; the Tower drive also needs care because its application formula is not established here.

The developer listed them himself, and two are genuinely unusual. None of them is signposted in game, so here they are with what each one is for.

The demo ships a complete eight-rank experience ladder with its thresholds already set. Twenty-two of the sixty-seven unit entries are wired to it, three rank effects exist in the whole build, and every one of them is switched off.

Dust Front RTS runs on four resources, and they are nothing like equally important. One is universal, one powers buildings, one is almost the Empire’s alone, and one is a ceiling rather than a currency.

The trench costs 10 minerals and holds 1 200 hit points. Every other way of defending a position in the demo costs at least twelve times as much — and everything that digs in stops being able to move.

Nothing on this battlefield simply disappears. The developer built a different afterlife for each faction — the mutants harvest their own dead, and the Empire brings its super-heavy vehicles back.