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The Newbies Guide to the Military Module

OK, my friend. You say you are new to the game and the military module is causing you headaches.
I sympathize, brother, truly I do.
I could tell you all about how much better things were in V1, but what would be the point?
Let’s try and make the best of a bad situation. Here’s the Newbies’s Guide to the Military Module.

1) First of all, don’t sweat it. You just started playing, OK? You’re going to make lots of mistakes, and you’re going to have almost no effect on any battle you become involved in.
You're the battlefield equivalent of a local villager with a pointed stick.
Looked at the wrong way, you may say what’s the point?
But I say, we sing, “What’s the Point in Worrying?” instead.
We’re just gonna go out there and get our butts kicked and that will be that.

2) Save your gold. Don’t spend it on Lana (military training), don’t spend it in the battlefield on wellness packs or other momentary advantages. Those are all designed to suck the gold out of your pockets, and you aren’t strong enough that a 50% advantage on anything is going to make any difference. 50% more pathetic is still pathetic. Save your gold.

3) Recognize what’s about to happen. We’re going to go out to the field, get our health crushed.
We’ll get some first aid and we’ll go back in, get our health crushed again, and more first aid.
Back in again, and health crushed again and now it’s either hike to the hospital (if there is one) or leave. We’re going to wake up in the morning with around 70 health. And repeat.

4) Work first. Then study/train. Then relax. And now head out to the battlefield.
It’s bad enough your employer will have to live with you being at around 70 health most mornings, battle hungover from your previous night’s foolish walk on the battlefield.
At least work at the high point of your wellness and health each day, whatever that is.
(Corollary: if your health is going to be 70, please try and make your happiness 100)

5) Now that work is done, if we’re going to train, we’re going to train as a rifleman. Why, you ask, wouldn’t it be cooler to learn to fly a plane. Yes, yes it would. But it would also be more expensive. And right now we’re trying to learn to navigate the field as cheaply as possible. And rifles are cheaper than planes.

6) Next, we’re going to buy a rifle. Which one? That’s easy, the absolute cheapest one we can find. What we’re trying to do is learn what to do without wasting a lot of money on the learning phase.

7) Now we’re off to the battlefield. The question now is “How much time do you have?” If you don’t have much time then our goal is to try and get deployed as near to the front as possible and if possible near to enemy artillery. As a rifleman, we are going to try and stay in the forest if we can.
We are going to attack artillery whenever we can, and we are going to avoid fighting with tanks above all. So if we’re in the forest, we can defend, but if we’re anywhere else, we are going to run from tanks. Where to? To the nearest friendly forest square.

😎 What about stacking with other friendlies? Well, that’s a good idea on general principles, but as Infantry, what we’d really like to have with us is air support, and air support has a tendency to run off at high speed and do its own thing. So any friendly stack is obviously better.

9) OK, so now a non-tank unit is in range of us camped in our forest. We attack and lose. No biggies, let’s do it all again. Wait, I hear you saying, we attack and lose? Oh yeah, we’re definitely gonna lose. We’re just beginning so we are totally not going to measure success in a win-lose dimension, we are just going to take note of what damage we did each time and feel good as that number gets better, because every point of damage we do to the opponent helps our cause and maybe weakens him a little so that one of the bigger dudes can take him out.

10) Eventually you’re out of time and/or health, so retreat, and we’ll see you tomorrow.

Wow, you say, kind of sucks. Well, yes, but remember, all we’re doing at this point is learning, and we’re not paying any gold (and very little money) for the privilege. And so yes, our little piece of the battle is very very little. That’s OK, it’s better than nothing at all. Over time we’ll do more and more and we’ll eventually reach the point where we’ll start to specialize in a second military skill as well, which I will suggest be air, because won’t that be fun. But for now, as long as we’ve managed our expectations and have no feeling of discouragement for exiting most combats lickety-split and with our health smoked, we’re doing great!

tl;dr

Don’t be discouraged by the “complexities” of the military module.
Buy a cheap gun,
deploy near the front,
and try to shoot at artillery if you can.

That’s it. Don’t worry, over time more and more will become clear and you’ll gain understanding of the strategies at the same time you’ll be gaining the actual military skills to use that knowledge.

What’s that? You say you’re a newbie but can’t afford a cheap gun? Hey, message your good buddy Rigour6 and I will send you your first gun absolutely free. Just because I’m that kind of guy.

Good luck, and good shooting.


SR Volume 15, Number 2