Basic Guide to Galactic War

[Rogueleader89]

We seem to be getting a lot of new galactic war players lately and the documentation on the gamemode is severely lacking so I figure its about time we collect basic info on it in one place (hopefully by the time this is outdated we'll have some official documentation floating about). I'm sure I've left some things out but this should at least be enough for a new player to get started. Feel free to suggest additions or rewording (I know its not as concise as it could be), If this gets enough use i'll see about adding images later. The end goal is simply to have someplace to link new players to when they ask about galactic war.

Introduction
Galactic War is a gamemode in which people of all factions fight to control over a thousand planets and conquer
the galaxy. To join the galactic war you must first pick a faction; note that you are stuck with your faction
choice for the duration of the war.

The Galaxy Map
Once you have chosen your faction you will see the galactic war map, by default uef appears blue, cybran red,
seraphim yellow, and aeon green. These colors and the opacity of territory can be changed at any time going to
options in the menu above then Settings->Galactic War.

Occupation
The goal of galactic war is to gain control of the galaxy, to do this you need to gain occupation on every planet.
Planets can have up to 100% occupation by a faction but only > 50% occupation is needed to be considered to be in
control of it. Planets that have more enemy planets adjacent to them than allied planets will slowly lose
occupation over time.

Attacking
Attacking is the only way to gain occupation for your faction. If you are above rank 1 attacking costs credits
(100 credits per rank above 1). When you attack a planet you will note that (at the top right of your screen) you
being charging an attack. Charging an attack takes 10 minutes, at the end of which you gain 5% occupation for your
faction. At any time during your charge an enemy or group of enemies can choose to defend, launching a game on the
map that planet is based on. Winning the game will get you 5% occupation for the win plus an additional 5% for
every charge that would have happened in the time the game took up to the number of enemies you fought (so if you
fought a 2v2 you'd get 5% for the win and up to 10% depending on how long the game went for a potential total of
15% increased occupation).

Be sure you take note of map sizes when attacking! Galactic War can be unforgiving and attacking a 4 team size map
by yourself is likely to end in a 4v1.

Hold Attacks & Cancelling an Attack
You can put an attack on hold by double clicking the "Charging Attack" bar at the top right, putting a planet on
hold allows anyone in your faction to take up your attack for free, this is often used by lower ranked players to
create attacks for higher ranks who would otherwise find attacking a planet prohibatively expensive. You can
cancel an attack outright by unchecking the "Available for playing" checkbox at the top right.

Defending
If someone is attacking your faction you will see a list of planets that need to be defended in the upper right
and the swirls of enemy attackers on the map over the planets that are being attacked. Unlike attacking, it is
free to defend, but be sure to coordinate with your team in chat before defending any planet as they may have more
intel than you on the attacker(s) and if you are rank 1 you can't see the number of people attacking or their
ranks, making it very easy to run into a 2v1 or wind up facing someone much better equipped if you aren't careful.

Squads
When you need to defend or take a planet of 2 team size or greater you'll want to form a squad. You can form a
squad by pressing the "Form a squad" button at the top right and double clicking on the names of people you would
like to invite to the squad (though please communicate through chat to people before inviting them, its rather
irritating to receive a bunch of squad invites when you are already attacking somewhere or otherwise preoccupied).
When in a squad, the squad leader pays for all attacks, thus it is generally best for squads to be led by lower
ranks.

Ranking Up
You can rank up by pressing the "Rank up" button at the top right of the screen. Each rank up costs a number of
credits and a number of victories (10 victories per rank past rank 2, unsure on credit numbers). The following are the effects of each rank:

Rank 1 - Paladin/Drone/Private/Su
Attack Cost: 0
Reinforcements: None
Planetary Defenses: None
Intelligence: None

Rank 2 - Legate/Node/Corporal/Sou
Attack Cost: 100
Reinforcements:
t1 units
Planetary Defenses:
t1 anti-air & point defense
Intelligence:
Can see number of attackers on a planet and their ranks.

Rank 3 - Priest/Ensign/Sergant/Soth
Attack Cost: 200
Reinforcements:
t1 and t2 units
t1 defenses
Planetary Defenses
t1 and t2 anti-air and point defense
t2 Tac Missile Defense
Intelligence:
Can see avatar names, ranks, and number of attackers.

Rank 4 - Centurion/Agent/Captain/Ithem -- For most people this is the highest rank you are going to want in the

present state of galactic war.
Attack Cost: 300
Reinforcements:
t1, t2, and t3 units
t1 and t2 defenses (including TML and artillery)
Planetary Defenses
t1 and t2 anti-air and point defences
t2 Tac Missile Launchers
t2 Tac Missile Defense
t2 Artillery

Rank 5 - Crusader/Inspector/Major/Ythilis
Attack Cost: 400
Reinforcements:
t1, t2, and t3 units
t1 and t2 defenses (including TML and artillery)
t3 point defense (UEF only), artillery, nuke launcher
Planetary Defenses
t1, t2, & t3 anti-air
t1 and t2 point defences
t2 Tac Missile Launchers
t2 Tac Missile Defense
t2 Artillery
t2 Radar

Bonuses beyond rank 5 are minimal, attack costs go up 100 per rank, credit reserves increase 1000 per rank. More
is likely to be added to these higher ranks in the future.

Rank 6 - Evaluator/Starshina/Colonel/Ythilsthe
Rank 7 - Avatar-of-War/Commandarm/General/YthiThuum
Rank 8 - Champion/Elite Commander/Supreme Commander/Suythel Cosethuum
There is only one rank 8 in each faction. The benefits of this rank are largely unfinished.

Reinforcements & Defenses

Once you reach rank 2 or higher you will be able to buy reinforcements and planetary defenses. You can buy
reinforcements by pressing the "Buy reinforcements" button at the top right of the screen. When buying
reinforcements it is important to take the delay time into account when purchasing units. Each unit purchased has
to be divided up into one of 5 different groups to be deployed in battle, each group has its own delay time
seperate from the others, so it is usually best to spread units out through all 5 groups in a way that achieves
the lowest delay time possible for each group. You can also buy reinforcements for other people, but they must be
bought directly for that person, they can not be put in your storage and transferred to them later.

To use your reinforcements in battle you need to build a beacon with your ACU (note to UEF commanders: despite the
beacon's appearance on the rover acu drone's build list, the drone's beacon will not work to call in
reinforcements). Once the beacon is built you can press the reinforcement group buttons on the left side of your
screen to call in the reinforcements in that group.

To purchase planetary defenses you start by clicking on the Buy planetary defenses button and then dragging the
planetary defense you want to buy onto the planet you wish for it to be positioned on. Note, the planet must have
over 50% occupation by your faction and if it drops below 50% all of your defenses there will be destroyed. The
next time someone of your faction plays on that map their base will start with those defenses inside of it (in the
case of games with a squad, all defenses start inside the squad leader's base).


Conquest & Defeat
When you win a battle in galactic war you gain credits which you can spend on reinforcements, attacks, and
planetary defenses. The amount of credits won depends on the rank of the opponent(s) you killed, higher ranks
being worth more credits, and how you won (you get more for auto-recalls and acu kills, significantly less if they
manually recall away).

By the same token when you lose your enemies also gain money for your death. The best way to avoid funding your
opponent's war campaign is to press the recall button on the left side of the screen if it is clear you are not
going to win the match. Recalling takes several minutes to perform (time varies depending on how far you are into
the match and if you have a beacon near you) so don't wait until the last minute to do it.

Should you die before you can manage to recall you will lose your current avatar, all of their reinforcements and
benefits of their rank and you will have to create a new rank 1 avatar.

Auto-recalls can prevent this, automatically saving your avatar from certain death if your hitpoints drop below 0,
but they come at the high cost of giving your enemy considerably more credits for forcing you to auto-recall (more
so than an outright acu kill) and 500 credits you have to spend on each autorecall. Generally speaking, despite
their ability at rank 2 you should not buy them until you reach rank 3 or rank 4 as rank 2 is very easy to get
back to (requiring only 200 credits to re-achieve).


Enslavement
When a faction loses all of their planets on the galactic war map they are enslaved to the faction that defeated
them. Essentially what this means is that the enslaved faction joins their enslavers (still playing their initial
faction but fighting for their new masters) and their enslavers gain the ability to purchase reinforcements of the
faction they enslaved (but not vice versa).

Rebellion
A faction can get out of enslavement by having their rank 8
player trigger a rebellion and take one planet back for the faction, this action is costly though and should be
done only when you can be reasonably sure of its success. NOTE: This feature is not implemented in the current galactic war.

[Dragonfire]

Great job,
maybe that can be the base for a wiki article?

http://www.faforever.com/mediawiki/inde ... lactic_War