Overview
Do you want to turn your game of Cortex Command into a demolished hellscape where defense reigns supreme? Do you need a way of defeating OP factions without using an OP faction yourself? It turns out you don’t even need (that many) mods to do it; all you need to do is apply the combat doctrine made famous by World War I to Cortex Command (it’s fun, trust me).
Intro
(If you don’t want to read all the fluff text, just skip to the summary at the end).
So you bought Cortex Command and thought “how do I turn this fast-paced RTS into a blasted out hellscape where both sides remain gridlocked until one side simply runs out of gold”? Well I did (or mainly needed a way of dealing with the stress of finals), and it’s actually pretty easy (and incredibly effective on bunker breach once you get the hang of it). Although you’ll probably need a couple of mods depending on how much you want to get into it (and while we can’t fully recreate trench warfare on both sides due to the AI and lack of a third dimension, we can get close). I have both British and German alternatives in the loadouts, so check there (while the Germans do have some WWI weapons, most are WWII, and because I’m bad at coding and there aren’t really any WWI mods out there I’ve had to cut some corners). tl;dr: Have you ever wanted to see the result of someone figuring out making guides helps with finals stress? Well now you can!
Before we begin (AKA incoherent rambling)
Now before we begin, you should realize that this little video game combat doctrine will be the antithesis of normal CC, where you’d have expensive soldiers running and flying around with the best weapons available. Sessions will become slow paced battles of attrition where you’ll mostly be stuck either defending your base from repeated enemy assaults or rebuilding your defenses for the next one. To achieve that rock bottom cost, I’ll be using the Wehrmacht faction since it is ironically better for weak unit spam than the Red Army. I might add more loadouts based on request, but for now it’s pretty limited.
Despite this, you’ll see yourself taking a shockingly small amount of losses (while defending, attacking is another story) while the enemy (even some of the stronger factions like House of Vryn, Myskoplex, or Lizard Men), can often suffer heavy losses from multiple failed assaults against something as little as some flat land with concrete sprayed about. Additionally, you’ll spend quite a bit of time preparing, building, sending in support units, and digging for more assaults. This will make games feel really on and off at times, with frequent moments where neither side attacks. When you do start attacking, however, it will most likely be at a scale larger than your standard skirmish. With that said, let’s begin.
Recommended mods
Before we start, you’ll probably want to get these mods:
- Wehrmacht (Free old guns, some are a little bit advanced and kind of cheatey due to the cost, but you can balance this in the settings if you want)
- United Kingdom of Britannia (AT weapons + grenades + drop pod)
- Unitec + Shield (really handy flamethrower, though its not needed) [forums.datarealms.com]
- Mobility (if you want some effective trench raiders and scouts, configuration required, lags if you get more than three on a toaster) [forums.datarealms.com]
- Imperium of Man (heavy artillery + units)
- UI-Tex (their bombs)
Loadouts
(Download links are permanently ded. Sites went down and I haven’t been able to find the originals 😔)
Before we begin, you’ll want to get your loadouts sorted out. There are four types of loadouts you’ll use throughout a single game: fort-building (most expensive, but you’ll only deploy them at the beginning of the game or they all get wiped out, of course), infantry (about 60% the cost of the first one), reinforcements (you’ll have multiple of these depending on the losses you suffered), Trench setters (these are cheap two man squads capable of entrenching themselves in about ~4 seconds), and heavy artillery. Let’s start with what you need for the defensive fort-crew.
There are two types of loadouts: German and British. I sadly couldn’t find enough WWI era weapons for the Germans, so there’s some WWII weapons involved with this group, although I managed to keep everything British WWI. I’d personally recommend the German loadouts as they produce the most authentic feel, but I’d also use weapons from both sides if you want to fit everything you can in for WWI. (Also, I’m making this off other people’s mods, so this is as historically accurate as I could make it. Expect some weapons made after the war if you go for German).
Use Drop pods for all unit loadouts: Kingdom of Britannia Stratford Deployment Device (only old-looking drop pod I know of that can drop +4 units in without either sinking through the map or exploding on impact).
Building your main fort (without bunker builder)
Now that you’ve chosen your faction, you’re ready to play (you’ll want to select “ALL” instead of whatever faction you chose). Anyways, once the game starts you’ll want to start out by calling in your fort builders while sending your brain to goldmine.
You want to be quick setting up defenses (under 3-5 minutes’ total), as you’re most vulnerable at this point and your units are not equipped for fighting undefended. You’ll want to use your engineer’s concrete sprayer set up one layer of your main fort at a time (starting with machine gun nests), moving units to their positions as you do so.
Your final fort will have three layers, with ceilings on two. To do this, you’ll need to do the arc on top of the MG nests for the second layer and third layer, which will probably cover up their window in the process. ♥♥♥♥ sucks I guess, but trying to get all three layers at once takes too much time. After digging out gun-ports for both sides you’ll want to call in the base crew again.
Defending yourself (Overview)
One of the main parts of trench warfare is protecting the ground you gain. To do that you’ll need to make sure of two things:
- 1. That the enemy cannot land dropships behind your frontline
- 2. That the enemy cannot attack you from both sides
Anti-aircraft
Restricting the enemy’s ability to use dropships and rockets anywhere behind your lines is probably the most important part to focus on here. This is because trench warfare occurred at a time when firepower outpaced mobility technologically, resulting in grueling fights where both sides would just hurl bullets and shells at the enemy until the enemy didn’t have enough resources left to defend. This was broken, of course, by British tanks. Now while we don’t have many tanks in CC, we do have dropships, which can easily break your front lines if you’re not prepared.
Creating good anti-aircraft defenses is pretty easy. AA drones can be set in fields between trenches with ease.
Try to have one of these in each field. If the enemy takes a trench, move your closest AA drone to your next trench.
Keep in mind that each drone only carries two missiles, so if one of them runs out you’ll have to restock. Sending a drone back at 100 health gives you a full refund, however, so you don’t actually lose gold replacing drones.
Defending your frontline
Now that you’ve supposedly stopped your enemy from transporting their dropships, you’re going to want to buff your defenses. You have three types of defenses:
Main fort (highest firepower, durable, decent defense)
Pillbox (Great defense and firepower, complex and fragile)
Trench (quick and easy to build, good defense)
You build your main fort as the center of your territory, obviously. After that, you’ll want to stick mostly with trenches. If you have UI-Tex bombs up against a player, you’ll probably want to add a little shelter to each trench in case the enemy tries to drop some on you. (Also, defend your tunnels much better as well if the enemy’s just going to drop bombs on you).
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend pillboxes. Pillboxes are complex, take too long to construct, and aren’t too durable. Despite this, they have great defense and firepower. They’re also the only fort capable of using riot shields as metal plating. These things can block damage up to direct hits from RPGs and sustained small arms fire and house infantry at the same time, but I personally don’t think they’re worth it (especially if the enemy is a player willing to spam bombs). Build one if you want a neat fortification, but personally I’d stick with trenches.
Attacking + bunker breaching
There are two stages of attacking the enemy bunker: getting to the bunker and bunker breaching. Getting to the bunker is the hard part, as the enemy will likely throw everything they have at you. First of all, you’ll want to set trenches to hold the ground you take. Refer to the section on Trench setting for that.
To reach the enemy bunker you’ll have to reach the entrace first. And to reach the entrance you’ll have to make it across whatever terrain there is between you and the enemy (hopefully flatland; these tactics do not work at all in mountainous terrain). Now, normally you’d just drop units over the enemy base the second you find the base. Using WWI tactics, however, you’re expected to hold all the land between the two of you (not too smart in my opinion, but hey, WWI wasn’t too smart either). We’ll cover that later though. Anyways, reaching the enemy bunker can be a hassle, but you’ll have strength in numbers with this method!
There are two types of squads you can deploy: field infantry (rank-and-file), and stormtroopers. While stormtroopers do work better than field infantry in most things, you’ll want to save them for the bunkers due to their high cost. Let’s stick with field infantry for now.
Open-combat:
Assaulting through open, flat areas is the biggest weakness with this strategy. Ironically, it will also be the most balanced part of the match. While your infantry weapons are weak with long-range combat, the support you use (artillery, aircraft, etc) will take down most enemies with little care to their armor. Remember to use your artillery here, because if you just try to send your field infantry straight in with no support they’ll get cut down without much hassle.
Field infantry here will be used mainly to hold the ground you gain, while support will work as your damage dealers.
Bunker breaching:
This is the point where you’ll want to pull out your stormtroopers.
Due to the tight spaces and unpredictability of bunker breaching, there’s no real doctrine for attacking the enemy outside of shelling the fort and libral use of flamethrowers/grenades. Your different squadmates work well in separate situations you’ll encounter in a fort:
The types of tricks you’ll encounter in a bunker, and how to deal with them. 90% of them can be solved with grenades though.
Still, it’s pretty fun winning against much stronger enemies in what is altogether a more large-scale Cortex Command battle. Don’t forget that your artillery spotter can call in artillery for free after you buy the radio, so remember to abuse that mechanic by continually shelling the enemy fort.[/previewimg]
Trench setting
If you’re trying to advance against an OP enemy, you’ll want to keep the ground you take. Trenches, as far as I’ve seen, are the best option for that. Setting trenches is fast, cheap, and effective. All you need are two actors, a digger, and a concrete sprayer (a medic bot + weapons too if you want to hold the trench).
You don’t need backup to set a trench. As long as there’s no enemies on the spot you’re landing you should be fine. Also, remember to keep the unit costs cheap. The trenches are used to minimize your losses while maximizing your opponents’. If they keep dropping units on top of you, set an Anti-air drone every couple of trenches. That should be enough to keep the AI/player from calling in more dropships on you. Try to make sure you don’t leave any undefended areas over your trenches unless you want the enemy dropping units behind your trenches. Just one of these almost doubles your trench price though, so try to keep it 1 AA for every two trenches.
One thing I’d recommend is to have the trenches close enough together that you can get two trenches firing on one wave simultaneously. This works wonders on the enemy, since they now have to deal with twice as much firepower for every trench they take.
Artillery
Artillery in CC is like a swiss army knife. It can be used to gain ground, hold ground, distract enemy players, and weaken defenses. You’ll want to use different types of artillery depending on what you’re doing though.
Light artillery (defense):
For defense you’ll probably want to use your artillery spotter from your main base (once you’ve established trenches around your main fort you can start moving artillery spotters to the front lines). The radio spotter’s light artillery is effective against units out in the open, though it does little against terrain and bunkers. Becuase of this you can keep your trench setters safe in the underground holes you’ve hopefully built by now while the enemy pretty much eats ♥♥♥♥.
Medium artillery (offensive):
Mid-sized artillery can be found in your presets under thudd. To use it you have to select where to deploy it, wait for the “craft” to arrive, and then scuttle it immediately. This artillery deals major damage, has a wider spread, and tears through terrain like butter, so make sure you don’t have any friendly units below when you call it in.
One artillery tactic you can use is the creeping barrage, which basically means that artillery moves up as you move up. Shell the enemies as you move up, then start shelling the next-closest enemies next.
Heavy artillery (harassment/sabotage):
The last type isn’t included in the loadout (I forgot it tbh), but it does its job well enough. If you want to copy it to your loadout, check below.
AddCargoItem = TDExplosive
PresetName = w40k.rte/Basilisk Designator
Anyways, the heavy artillery has a tight spread, doesn’t last too long, and costs 150 gold, but it works well at chewing through bunkers. If you don’t want to deal with an enemy, or wish to better ventilate the enemy’s bunker, this is your best option.
Deployable minefields:
The last type here isn’t technically artillery, but it works well when you need to create a no-man’s land. The mines used here will spread out a bit, so make sure you don’t deploy it right on top of a trench. They’ll activate the second they hit the ground, so they can be used even if the enemy is already moving. These S-mines are commonly known as bouncing betty’s. They got the name because they’ll pop up and blow up your face when they detonate. That’s pretty neat, but remember that this is old tech. That means that these ones can’t tell friend from foe, and are just as likely to blow up when you step on it as your enemy. That means that when you create a no-man’s land with these, it applies to you too. They can’t be disarmed either, so the best way to clear minefields is to march crabs or cheap units through them (or wait until the enemy does the same).
Everything above in two minutes (important, at least).
Do you not want to read for half an hour to learn how to make CC WWI? Makes sense tbh.
Step 1: You build a big concrete fort.
Step 2: You dig some trenches.
Step 3: You use generic infantry and artillery in the open, setting trenches as you go.
Step 4: You use the Stormtroopers on the enemy base.
And that’s pretty much it. I’d recommend checking up on specifics if you want more detailed strategies, but it’s not really too important.
Tips and notes:
- Always take the high ground when you can.
- Spam artillery.
- Grenades clear out corners.
- Keep plenty of AA.
- Keep things as cheap as possible.
- If you have extra units on the field, keep them in the second/third trench, not the first.
- Keep some medic drones in reserve.
- Riot shields can make for good metal plating. Get two and you can stop explosives.
- Heavy artillery can create craters you can hide in.
- You can spread out the sides of your fort if you want.
- A big part of the battle is plinking away at the enemy in-between charges.
- Your trench raider is capable of great scouting in the beginning.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Rather, try to get as many baskets as possible.
- If the enemy wastes 1,000 gold taking your 280 gold trench, you’ve won that battle.
- Keep a squad of infantry/stormtroopers in a reserve trench. The first trench is there to wear down the enemy, the second is there to counterattack and push back the enemy.
- Recycle and reuse equipment left on the battlefield. If you know what you’re doing you can fight an enemy with 3x as much gold as you and win.
- Waste enemy resources.
- Use your artillery spotter frequently.
- More accurate trenches have the machine gun in a nest behind the trenches. I’ll update it and try to change this detail later.
Future additions (coming soon!)
- More loadouts
- Figure out pillboxes (defunct, pillboxes were just too complex on top of an item bug rendering turning riot shields into terrain from object if there’s too many items on the map)
- More accurate trenches
- Tunnel warfare
- Better stormtroopers
- More historically accurate weapons/actors
- Mechanized infantry
- Chemical warfare
If you have any ideas or mods that would help out with this, feel free to post them.