Unlike the other classes, Air Raider play is about planning ahead. Most AR actions have a delayed effect, and you'll have to be able to make moves well before you need them, sometimes as far ahead as a full minute. If you're playing alone, the only thing you have backing you up are the plans you made two minutes ago.

You'll be experiencing show-stopping problems that your fellow players never even have to think about, and find yourself helpless in encounters that seem trivial for any other soldiers. If playing in a group, you must be able to put a lot of trust in your comrades, and if you're not already taking charge and commanding the other players around, you should.

From this description, you may be under the mistaken impression that Air Raider play is less frantic, and that you will have to worry less about dodging attacks and shooting accurately. That is not the case. As an Air Raider, you will have to aim harder and dodge more than anyone else, you'll just have to do your aiming and dodging while also thinking about your next and previous moves. You'll be rolling between acid shots while luring your attackers into exploding traps. You'll be running frantically away from spiders while waiting for backup to arrive. You'll jump from wall to wall weathering mortars while counting the seconds until your vehicle drops.

As an Air Raider, a single ant is a tragedy, but a million is strategy.

Credits are a unique concept to Air Raiders. They are used for all weapons in the "Calling for Support" category, as well as calling in vehicles. Enemies killed will fill the Air Raider's credits up, effectively increasing reload progress for those weapons.

Credits are wasted on fully reloaded weapons, and are not split in any way. If multiple Air Raiders carry multiple items reloaded through credits, they will all be fully credited. It's not necessary for the player to personally kill an enemy in order to receive credits, anything could kill them.

What follows is a table of each enemy and the credits they release when killed. It was google translated from this table: https://www2.atwiki.jp/edf41/?type=&pageid=218
Some of the translations were weird and it's possible for them to have been misinterpreted. Note that as the most expensive Air Raider items don't cost any more than 9000, it's not possible to know if some enemies give more than that. Enemies that provide 9000 or more credits are marked with ✔.



The values in parantheses for Earth Eaters and their weaponry are the values the units have during the final DLC mission Starry Prison. Earth Eater cannons that don't appear on the radar do not give credits when defeated.

A humble category, guidance equipment has only two distinct entries. They allow you to assist fellow players by making their missiles lock on faster and at further distances. Certain Fencer weapons require these in order to work.

It's possible to manually guide other player's missiles using the lasers from laser-guided airstrikes, but unlike the specialized guidance equipment, the missiles will not be boosted by it. This goes without saying for almost all Air Raider equipment, but don't bring this without a specific plan for it.

Boost: ★★★★★
Range: ★★★★☆
Support Tool

The first weapon listed for Air Raider sets a precedent for the class. When playing alone, it is totally useless. When paired with allies with missile launchers, it turns them from mediocre/unusable to awesome. If you find supporting other players, and increasing their killing power to be a fulfilling playstyle, look no further.

Laser Guide Kit is not the only way to guide allied missiles, but it gives the highest boost in terms of reduced lock-on time and increased lock-on range.

Sometimes when supporting a player with LGK, it can be beneficial to stand closer to the enemy than the supported player. Most of the time, their lock-on range will increase to something far beyond the range of the laser itself. It's just as fine, however, to use LGK right next to the player you're supporting in order to coordinate more easily

Note that even though the lock-on range of the launcher increases, the range of the missile itself does not. Your allies may find that missiles disappear mid-flight despite being able to lock on to distant enemies.

Boost: ★★★★★
Range: ★★☆☆☆
Support Tool

This low-level variant of LGK is much stronger than all but Laser Guide Kit T4, in that the lock-on reduction and range boost is better, and even then its range boost is unmatched. The drawback is that the laser itself is quite short, requiring the Air Raider to get close up to the action in order to keep the missiles supported.

The payoff is good in terms of increased rate of missiles that can be sent, but the Air Raider will put themselves at risk using it.

If you're looking to support a Ranger with this, they should be using Prominence. That line reloads quickly, and packs a powerful punch, but suffers from very long lock-on time. LGK can severely reduce that drawback, making Prominence as effective as Lysander.

Since Prominence has a small targeting rectangle, it can be useful to aim at the ground or a wall and let the Ranger achieve lock-on to the stationary target first, then move the laser to the enemy you intend to destroy after the missiles have been sent.

Not recommended. If you wish to support a Wing Diver's missiles, see the sections for Guide Beacon Gun and the various Plasma Chargers.

Fencer has missiles with all the strength of Tempest air strikes, and with none of the need for credit refills. Laser Guide Kit pairs well with Phonenix and especially Leviathan. Both require a guide kit of some sort in order to function, and Leviathan in particular takes a very long time to achieve lock-on. The payoff is damage enough to kill almost anything in one or two hits (remember that Fencer can dual-wield).

This works best as an ambush, but can also be used with NPCs or other players being in the frontline drawing heat away from you.

It's possible to support a different Air Raider using Nageling Self-Propelled Rocket with Laser Guide Kit, but not recommended. Instead, see the section for Guide Beacon Gun.

Boost: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Support Tool

Guide Beacon Gun is much easier to use for the Air Raider than Laser Guide Kit, but serves largely the same purpose. Instead of wasting time that could be used reloading posts or piloting vehicles pointing a laser all day long, with GBG it's possible to fire a beacon at an enemy and leave all the hard work to the people firing the missiles.

If there are multiple targets where it's interesting to lock on with a missiles, the gun carries multiple beacons that can be fired before a reload is needed. The gun reloads when all the beacons are destroyed, and vice-versa.

Boost: ★★★★☆
Range: ★★★★★
Support Tool

These variants are better than other Guide Beacon Guns. The 'drawback' is reduced ammo capacity, but since the best use of GBG is to focus multiple missiles on a single target, it's not a problem.

Ranger has a couple of missile launchers that fire multiple missiles: Emerald and MLRA. With GBG it's possible to focus all of those missiles on a single or fewer targets, which is nice sometimes.

Wing Diver has a insanely powerful missile launcher called Fenrir 3-Way. It locks onto enemies instantly, but if combined with GBG, damage can be tripled against a single target from further away. The energy consumption is large and should be combined with a Plasma Charger.

Other good uses are Mirage 15 (15 locks) and Ghost Chaser (30 locks)

GBG can work nicely with Phoenix, as its lock-on time is relatively low. Another option is Haytal Multi-Missile with its 15 to 30 targets. If desirable, beacons can be spread over multiple targets such as a few Hectors.

It's possible to support a different Air Raider or yourself with GBG. By hitting a target and locking on with Naegeling Self-Propelled Rocket, you can focus all 10 lock-ons to a single target, resulting in a very nice amount of total damage that's hard to miss with. This also works for the missiles on other vehicles, such as Vegalta, Proteus, and certain Titan variants.

Air Raider was named after this weapon category, so it's safe to say that they're important. All air raids pack immense power and cover a large area, the difference in each type is mostly in which of those two aspects they emphasize, as well as how expensive they are to call.

Properties shared by air raids include:

• Reloading by credits rather than time.
  
• Delay between the strike being called and the effect happening, starting from at least 4 seconds.
  
• The attack originating from the sky rather than your gun.
  
• Enormous damage.
  
• Large area of effect.
  
• An immense risk of self-harm.
  
• The ability to change the tide of the battle.

Air raids are not to be used haphazardly, as you do not get an unlimited supply of them. You start with one strike (usually), and after it's used you'll need to kill enough enemies to earn a new one. Generally, enemies with more health give more credits, so it's wise to save your strikes for either large concentrations of enemies, or particularly tough ones.

At the same time, the act of not using your air raid is also wasted. As long as you have a fully loaded air raid in your inventory, credits from killed enemies do not contribute to fill it up.

An air raid is capable of paying for its own credits. It's not uncommon to be able to call the same strike many times in succession if fighting a particularly large horde.

Support beacons come in three variants:

• Hand-thrown smoke grenade, usually associated with very slow, large raids where precision is of less importance.
  
• Launcher-thrown smoke grenade that summon precision strikes which hit relatively quickly.
  
• Laser guns with scope, most often capable of directing the strike after it has arrived. These must be aimed for a sustained duration in order to call the strike.

Damage ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Area ★★★★★
Beacon Hand Grenade

This is Air Raider's signature strike. While slow, it's capable of leveling a neighbourhood in a single, humongous burst. Only one other weapon in the game is capable of matching the sheer area covered by Howitzer.

The damage is generally enough to weaken or kill most giant insects, depending on how many bombs hits them, so it's a good strike to call in on groups of weaker enemies.

Howitzer is powerful, but its cost is high, and the strike takes a long time to hit after being called, so use wisely.

Recommended targets:

• Entire city blocks
  
• Black Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Dragons

Damage ★★★★★★★★★★
Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Area ★★☆☆☆
Beacon Hand Grenade
Partial Credits

No single attack in the game can match the damage inflicted by Cannon Artillery Strike. The final version hits a relatively small area (for an airstrike) with 20 shots of 40 000 damage, for a total of 800 000.

While almost nothing can possibly survive a full barrage from Cannon, the blast radius of the projectiles is small, and the strike is slow to come in, so it's possible to miss even humongous targets such as Erginus, as they will have plenty of time to get out of the way.

Note that Cannon Strike starts mostly with empty credits, and cannot be used at the start of a mission. Additionally, it's fairly expensive to refill. However, its high damage means that when used on targets that require it, Cannon Strike is capable of paying for its own upkeep.

Recommended targets:

• The Hive
  
• Tunnel Exits
  
• Erginus
  
• Queens
  
• Kings
  
• Death Queens
  
• Golden Queens
  
• Silver Spiders
  
• Hectors
  
• Retarius' webs
  
• Void Ships (learn the timing and deploy a little before the ship opens)
  
• The Brain (with luck and/or mad skills)

Damage ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Area ★★☆☆☆
Beacon Grenade Launcher

Not to be confused with the Artillery Strike categories of air raids.

The Attack Whale strikes are characterized by low cost and quick response times, allowing them to be used as primary weapons. Attack Whale's Artillery keeps up a burst of 300 shots over 15 seconds spread over its area, making it equally good at inflicting high damage to a heavy target as it is for area denial. For effective results, put one on a stationary target, or call one between yourself and your enemies, then kite the enemies into it.

The low cost means that Artillery can self-sustain, and it's entirely possible to call one in while another is going on. Air Whale is just one hell of a gunner like that!

If you find that Artillery suits your style, it's not a bad idea to dual-wield it. By throwing out two at the same time, you increase your chances of self-reloading both, and by alternating them over low-credit enemies you can try to ensure you will always have one prepared.

Artillery excels against dense clusters of aerial foes. A good strategy for dealing with swarms of drones or bees in cities is to hide in tight alleys and call Artillery there. Combined with either Anti-Aircraft Bunkers or a Life Vendor, you can stay more or less unharmed while the enemies swirl into their deaths like a draining bathtub.

Additinally, the total damage of Artillery is very high, competing with Satellite Blaster in firepower, but at a much lower cost. It's difficult to pull off from a distance, but it's also extremely good at surpressing tunnel exits.

Recommended targets:

• Dragons
  
• Black Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Drones
  
• Tunnel Exits
  
• Transport Ships

Damage ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Area ★★★☆☆
Beacon Grenade Launcher

The Attack Whale strikes are characterized by low cost and quick response times, allowing them to be used as primary weapons. The 105mm and 120mm Cannon bursts consists of 20 fairly powerful shots launched over a few seconds, adding up to quite a bit of damage. The shots will pierce through enemies and sometimes terrain, and each invidivial shot, although not explosive, is still likely to hit multiple enemies if aimed at a cluster of them.

Compared to Air Whale's Artilley, Cannon burst is more expensive, but its damage comes out quicker, the affected area is larger, and the heavier hits are more condusive to stunning heavier enemies and one-shotting weaker enemies.

Recommended targets:

• Tunnel Exits
  
• Black Ants
  
• Red Ants
  
• Bees
  
• Red Bees
  
• Flying Vehicles
  
• Silver Spiders
  
• Hectors

Damage ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★★☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Area ★☆☆☆☆
Beacon Grenade Launcher

The Attack Whale strikes are characterized by low cost and quick response times, allowing them to be used as primary weapons. The 150mm Cannon is a single, heavy-hitting shot thundering from the skies and obliterating anything in its path. It will pierce through enemies in the air and explode when it hits the ground, so care should be taken to avoid being caught in its small, but lethal blast radius.

No air strike will reload as quickly as 150mm Cannon, and anywhere from 1 to 3 enemies will be enough to call it once more. While Cannon has a variety of uses, it distinguishes itself from other airstrikes by being particularly handy for close-quarters combat. When being pursused by enemies, simply call one close to your current position and roll away. The enemies will get caught in the blast radius and perish.

Note that while the damage is extremely high for a single shot, it will most of the time not be able to kill tough targets, such as Hectors and Erginus, and therefore won't be able to reload itself on them.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Red Ants
  
• Gold Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Silver Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Red Bees
  
• Dragons

Damage ★★★★★
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Area ★★★★★
Beacon Hand Grenade
Usable under Earth Eaters

Probably the first thing that comes to mind when you hear "Air Raid" is the classic Bombing Plan. One or more planes flies overhead, carpet-bombing an enormous area in its wake. The damage is enormous, the covered area is immense, the spectacle is unmatched, and so its no wonder that Charon Bombing plans are among the most expensive types of air raids available.

Each Charon Bombing Plan has a different pattern, and before bringing one out in the field, it's important to memorize it. When calling for one, you should already have an idea of where the planes come from, where they'll go, which area will be struck, and whether or not any buildings or terrain will block the bombs from hitting their intended targets.

Keep in mind that the altitude of Charon will be determined by ground level as well as the plan itself. When standing on particularly tall buildings and throwing the beacon, Charon might fly directly through the building below you.

For quick reference, each bombing pattern is described briefly below:

A single line moving forward, starting at the beacon. Decent damage for its tier, but poor coverage.

Two lines in a diagonal X-shape, crossing over the beacon. Coverage is small, but if something is caught in the middle of the X it's pretty screwed.

Three distinct lines going right-to-left. The middle of the middle line will hit the beacon, meaning the side-lines will hit the user if not thrown far enough. Gaps between the C-bombers are wide enough that it's possible for players to stand between them and remain unscathed.

From C and up Bombing Plans really start to shine in coverage, and will generally be able to cover most, if not the entirity of a group of enemies.

Four dense lines going back-to-front in quick sequence, ending at the beacon. From here on up, every Bombing Plan can be situationally useful in Inferno. When throwing a bombing plan into an open area from cover, D can sometimes be preferable to F as the bombers are less likely to destroy the player's cover. It's mostly outclassed for Plan E and F, however.

A single line going left-to-right, dropping the most powerful bombs out of all bombing plans. The covered length is immense, and when playing offline most enemies will not be able to survive the run.

Plan E's bomber flies at a much higher altitude than other Bombing Plans, and as such it will fly above Earth Eaters rather than below them.

Four lines going forward, covering a considerably wider area than Plan D. Plan F offers all of the coverage of Gigantic Howitzer, with a larger amount of damage.

An interesting property about bomber planes is that they have a physical presence in the game world while bombing. Hectors will often turn to the sky and attempt to shoot them down, serving as a nice distraction.

Althought the cost is high, when there are enough enemies, especially swarms of heavy insects, Bombing Plans can pay their own upkeep, allowing them to be called in again and again until the odds are no longer against you.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Red Ants
  
• Gold Ants
  
• Silver Spiders
  
• Tunnel Exits

Damage ★★★★★
Speed: ★★★★☆
Range: ★★★★★
Area ★★★★☆
Beacon Hand Grenade

Strafe Plans consists of 3-5 planes spreading out in a fan formation, running a machinegun along the ground hitting anything that might be in its wayt. It takes some planning, but the bullets are good at hitting otherwise difficult-to-bomb targets such as drones, bees, and spiders. Those enemies, if hit by just a single one of the hundreds of bullets in a strike, tend to perish instantly. Large enemies such as hives and queens will take many hits from Strafe Plan, accumulating massive amounts of damage per run.

An aspect of strafe plan that is not to be taken lightly is the planes' ability to attract enemy attention. If you're far enough away from the enemy when using this strike, they'll chase after the planes trying to attack them as they fly away. In sufficiently crowded maps where you can keep affording to repeatedly call the air raids in, Strafe Plan can maintain enemy aggro until they've been whittled down to managable numbers.

Note that due to the enormous length of a strafe plan run, it can cover nearly the entire map from one end to the other. This can have the unfortunate side effect of drawing unwanted aggro before you were ready for it. Additionally, the strafing will start fairly far behind the beacon, and there is a chance you yourself might get hit by it, doubly so if you're in a vehicle.

Due to the low flight altitude of Strafe Plan, it's possible for the planes to sneak under some shield bearers. Additionally, the planes will fly straight through and deal damage to enemies at certain altitudes, such as dropships, or the quadruped fortress.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Golden Ants
  
• Red Ants
  
• Queen Ants
  
• Golden Queens
  
• Spiders
  
• Silver Spiders
  
• Silver Kings
  
• Drones
  
• Flying Vehicles
  
• Dragons
  
• Bees
  
• Red Bees
  
• Queen Bees
  
• Red Queens
  
• Argo (Robot)

Damage ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆
Area ★★☆☆☆
Beacon Hand Grenade

An overpriced firework show. The intention is probably to keep a perimeter defended, but it's hard to find a situation that justifies the steep cost, requires constant bombardment, and doesn't just straight up give you enough credit to keep spamming stronger, wider-covering Bombing Plans.

Recommended targets:

• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Damage ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Area ★★★★☆
Beacon Hand Grenade

Looks very spectacular, and from the numbers you might assume Cluster Hit is incredibly good, but what's not being told is that the blast radius for each of the 50 bombs are quite small, and there's a sorry tendency to just not hit very much of anything with it.

Recommended targets:

• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Damage ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Area ★★★☆☆
Beacon Laser Guide
Can be used under Earth Eaters

The missile strikes distinguish themselves by being called in with a laser pointer rather than a beacon grenade. The player needs to assume a considerably more active role when calling these in, but the payoff can be worth it, as the targeted area can be moved, and the strike can hit relatively precisely.

To call it, point the laser at any area until the confirmation beep. Targeting will happen faster the less the laser moves, so the easiest way to call a strike is to simply point it at ones feet. After a while, the missiles will arrive somewhere in the sky with no target in particular, one after another. There's no clear indication of when this happens other than a red square on your hud per missile, indicating a missile following your laser, if you happen to be pointing the laser at the time.

The tricky part is to balance moving around, driving vehicles, reloading other weapons, etc. with micromanaging the missile. Once locked onto an point, the missile will head there on its own with no further pointing needed, but for moving targets it may be desirable to maintain the laser constantly.

Coastal missiles in particular track poorly and it should not be expected to hit exactly where you aim, especially not for moving targets. Instead, it's generally best to use them for a tactical carpet bomb, swiping the laser across groupes of enemies to hit them all one way or the other. High ground and great distance is recommended for aiming the missiles as best as can be done.

It is possible to run and even roll while aiming coastal missiles, and as such they can with some luck be used in close-range brawls for lack of better options.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Red Ants
  
• Gold Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Hectors
  
• Deroys
  
• Earth Eater cannons

Damage ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Area ★★☆☆☆
Beacon Laser Guide
Can be used under Earth Eaters

For info about missile strikes in general, see the previous section for Coastal Missiles (Despina)

High-Speed and Lionic missiles are variants of Coastal Missiles. Individual missiles carry less damage and blast area, but makes up for it in sheer numbers and higher speed.

Unfortunately, they're considerably more expensive than their clumsier cousins, and as such is difficult to recommend. However, their ease of use make them a favourite among fresh Air Raiders.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Gold Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Hectors
  
• Drones
  
• Bees
  
• Flying Vehicles

Damage ★★★★★★★
Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★★
Area ★★★★★
Beacon Laser Guide
Can be used under Earth Eaters

For info about missile strikes in general, see the previous section for Coastall Missiles (Despia)

The logical extreme evolution of Air Tortoise. Tempest is the missile the radio chatter mentions is used to shoot down one of the invading mother ships in mission 9: Beach Fear. It is a single, enormous missile the size of a large building, with firepower to match, and slowness to compensate.

Due to its glacial pace, it's strongly discouraged to micromanage this missile for too long. Call it in, wait for it (you'll know it arrives when the map is bathed in yellow light and you hear the engine roar), point it at some place within a block or two of what you want to blow up and go mind other business waiting for it to hit its target.

Due to the slow speed and steep cost, these missiles might seem more like a gimmick than anything else, but be assured it's worth every credit. No other air srike can guarantee such a tremendous amount of damage over such an enormous area. There are missions where a single Tempest can wipe out almost everything.

It's also hilarious, which counts for a lot.

Recommended targets:

• Red Ants
  
• Hectors
  
• Deroys
  
• Tunnel exits
  
• Sufficiently dense clusers of anything
  
• Other players in Vs mode

If you're interested in a valid use-case for Tempest, see the co-op strategy addendum for 29. Brute Force

Damage ★★★★★
Speed: ★★★★★
Range: ★★★★★
Area ★☆☆☆☆
Beacon Laser Guide

A powerful, versatile, cheap, accurate airstrike with applications limited only by your imagination.

Satellite Blaster is called in by pointing at an area until you get a confirming beep. The laser pointer is capable of zooming, and as such Satellite Blaster can be used for sniping enemies from afar. Unlike with Coastal Missiles, it's impostant to point at or close to your target, as the blaster will initially hit where you first pointed it at.

Note that even if the satellite blaster gets fully reloaded, it's not possible to call it again until a few seconds after it's finished firing.

After being called in, it's possible to move the laser around. Earlier iterations will move very slowly, but by the final specs it can move almost as fast as you can aim it.

Due to putting out a huge quantity of damage over a long period of time, Satellite Blaster has unlimited use cases. It can be called in and forgotten about at strategic choke points, acting as a barrier through which enemies cannot pass, it can be used to snipe down enemies small and large from afar, and it can be used to quickly dipose of a few enemies nearby. It can even do all three of those things at once in a single call-in, that's just how versatile it is.

Satellite Blaster is the equivalent of a Ranger having a Fusion Blaster that can be reloaded again and again, with the only difference being the laser coming from the sky instead of from the gun. That's not even necessarily a disadvantage, as it can be used to attack enemies not even currently within your line of sight.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Red Ants
  
• Gold Ants
  
• Green Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Silver Spiders
  
• Tunnel Exits
  
• Bees
  
• Red Bees
  
• Dragons
  
• Yellow Dragons
  
• Red Dragons
  
• Hectors
  
• Void Ships
  
• Erginus
  
• The Brain

Damage ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★★★
Area ★★☆☆☆
Beacon Laser Guide

Where Satellite Blaster was a directed, constant, flexible ray of doom, Spritefall is content with randomly raining lasers vaguely around a area at a higher cost. It's not nearly as useful, but it still has applications.

The most common use-case is as a panic bomb. Spritefall can with some luck be called in on your current position and most likely miss you, while hitting a lot of enemies around you, providing breathing room. It can also be good at hitting larger targets that move around a bit without needing to be micromanaged at every second.

Spritefall is mostly safe to call when standing underneath roofs, but if the roof is too low there is a danger of being hit straight through it.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Red Bees
  
• Dragons
  
• Yellow Dragons
  
• Red Dragons
  
• Void Ships
  
• The Brain

Note that despite being called with a laser guide, Spritefall can not be moved.

Damage ★★★★★
Speed: ★★★★☆
Range: ★★★★★
Area ★★★☆☆
Beacon Laser Guide

A one-of-a-kind superweapon. Laguna Blaster is a hybrid between Spritefall and Lionic missiles.

When called, laser missiles will rain from random points in the sky all over the map. These missiles can be guided with the laser, focusing the damage on a single target, or, more usefully, spread across as many clusters of enemies as is needed.

Unlike Satellite Blaster, the lasers from Laguna Blaster have an explosive radius. This allows the player to quickly get rid of mob clusters. It's also very powerful, allowing one to get rid of single targets quickly. However, if single targets is the point of the strike, the final Satellite Blasters carries the same amount of damage at a much lower credit cost.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Gold Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Red Bees
  
• Dragons
  
• Yellow Dragons
  
• Tunnel Exits
  
• Erginus
  
• Hectors
  
• Deroys

Damage ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★★
Area ★★★★★
Beacon Laser Guide
Partial Credits

A one-of-a-kind superweapon. Rule of God has more bark than it has bite, but it still has a lot of bite.

When called, a laser spans from the extreme left of the target all the way to the extreme right. The entire line explodes, destroying all buildings in the way and inflicting 10,000 damage to anything that happens to be in the way.

Unfortunately, the laser is difficult to aim correctly, and takes a very long time to both call and arrive. Any uneveness in the ground can result the laser going in a totally different direction from what was expected, and the laser can feel somewhat thin, despite its massive coverage. It's simply rare to line up all that many enemies in the blast, especially compared to how many credits needs to be earned before being able to use it even for the first time.

However, that moment where you manage to ambush a map-wide lines of spiders just as they spawn, killing 99% of the wave is incredibly satisfying.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Gold Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Silver Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Red Bees
  
• Dragons
  
• Deroys

A second category of weapons just for helping out your fellow players, Support Equipment can also be used to boost yourself, your vehicles, and your NPC companions.

Common traits include:

• Nodes that are either planted as a post or shot from a launcher.
  
• Remaining stuck to whatever surface it was attached to, be it the ground, a building, a vehicle, or a dragon.
  
• A coloured sphere surrounding the node inside which its effect will apply.
  
• Long reload times or the abilty to reload being absent (some exceptions),

Note that support equipment planted on something that disappears, such a destroyed building or a slain enemy, will disappear along with it.

Healing: ★★★☆☆
Duration: ★★★★☆
Area: ★★★☆☆
Cannot reload

A post that lasts for one minute, healing everything around it steadily. Enemies will also be healed, but it's usually not a problem.

It's possible to be affected by multiple Life Vendors, so they can be stacked for faster healing.

Fencer shields are not affected by Life Vendors.

Life Vendor is handy in standoffs where you and your allies are under siege and need to make a stand. By gathering around a Life Vendor, the whole group will be steadily healed, counteracting the slow chipping down of health of enemies managing to get off potshots before being disposed.

Vendor can also be mounted on a vehicle, effectively adding some survivability to it, as well as letting it act as a mobile healing unit.

Healing: ★★★★★
Duration: ★★☆☆☆
Area: ★☆☆☆☆
Cannot reload

A node that lasts for ten seconds, healing its target and anyone close enough intensly fast. Enemies will also be healed, but that's usually not a problem.

It's possible to be affected by multiple Life Spouts, so they can be stacked for faster healing.

Fencer shields are not affected by Life Vendors.

Life Spout Gun is handy in extreme duress where you need to survive for a few more seconds before backup arrives. Get swarmed, call a Whale, Satellite Blaster or Spritefall, find some sparse cover and fire one or more in the ground. This could keep you going until the cavalry arrives and blows the drones of the sky.

LSG can be used when grabbed by Red Ants or Red Dragons in order to survive the attack. However, note that this will also heal your assailant, making it much more difficult for allies to free you.

Other than that, LSG can be used a standard healing device, being made use of to restore the health of yourself, your vehicles or your allies.

Energy: ★★☆☆☆
Duration: ★★★★☆
Area: ★★★★★

A post that lasts for 90 seconds, charging the plasma capacitor of any Wing Divers in range. It affects AI Wing Divers as well as other players.

The energy restoration is not the best, but the covered area is large, allowing a Wing Diver to move around quite a lot while having more energy than usual. The benefits are not as tangible as with other chargers, but the duration is very long.

As the reload time is shorter than the duration, it's possible to have two of the same plasma charger out if the Air Raider focuses on keeping it maintained. Under the effect of two chargers, a Wing Diver can fly infinitely.

In order to understand the exact ramifications of plasma chargers, it's necessary to know what the numbers provided in the equipment details represent:

• The natural charge rate for WD is 0.1
  
• Emergency charge rate is 0.2 (out of energy, red, beeping, smoking)
  
• The thrusters consume 0.25, resulting in a net loss of 0.15 due to the recharge.

That means that in order to achieve infinite flight, one needs to stack up 0.15 on a Wing Diver, and even then the energy will still drain while reloading.

In practical terms, a full recharge for a WD without plasma chargers would take a bit over 16 seconds, or a bit over 8 seconds under emergency reloads. The total capacity for a Wing Diver's battery is 100, and the ticks of 0.1 is applied 60 times per second, for a total of 6 energy restored per second

Same as Life Vendor, Plasma Charge can be used when you need to support Wing Divers defending an area. All the Wing Divers with Monsters in the mission Machine Squad is a good example such a situation.

The charger can also be attached to a vehicle, allowing an Air Raider to keep up with a Wing Diver while supporting them.

Energy: ★★★★★
Duration: ★☆☆☆☆
Area: ★★☆☆☆

A post that that lasts for 13-20 seconds, charging the plasma capacitor of any Wing Divers in range. It affects AI Wing Divers as well as other players.

The energy restoration is extremely high, but the covered area is small and the duration is pitiful. On the surface, they may seem obsolete due to the existence of Plasma Guns, but if your purpose is to spam as much energy weapons as possible rather than taking flight, then Streamers offer the best energy-to-reload-time ratio on the market.

Use it to Spam Monster, Gungnir, Fenrir, Plasmafall, Plasma Launchers and Luxard.

Energy: ★★★★☆
Duration: ★★☆☆☆
Area: ★☆☆☆☆

A node that that lasts for 30 seconds, charging the plasma capacitor of any Wing Divers in range. It affects AI Wing Divers as well as other players.

The energy restoration is extremely high, but the duration is somewhat short. However, since it can be attached directly to the Wing Diver, it's optimal for Wing Divers that need to move somewhere very far away, very fast.

With the later versions, a single node is enough for infinite flight and change, but earlier versions will need a couple of nodes to achieve it. See the section in Plasma Charge regarding exact energy numbers for Wing Divers.

Battery Guns are versatile and can be used to send Wing Divers somewhere they need to be right away, as well as giving them a period of flight-driven carpet bombing.

If duel-wielded, later Plasma Battery guns can be maintained almost 100% of the time. To do so, use 1 node at a time from the gun you're not reloading. With a reload time of 60 seconds and 30 + 30 seconds of boost from the other gun, you'll always have a node ready.

Boost: ★★★★★
Duration: ★★★☆☆
Area: ★★★☆☆

A post that that lasts for 60-90 seconds, boosting the damage of players, allies, and vehicles within range. Most units boost by 20%, but the final spec boosts by 50%.

Despite Internet rumours claiming the contrary, Guard Posts do not stack. This can be easily verified by boosting a Ranger with a Stingray and see whether or not you take more than 100/120/150 damage.

Power Posts can be used when making a stand, more often than not, it's handier to place on top of a vehicle in order to boost it. While it takes considerably longer to reload than a Power Assist Gun, it also lasts longer and requires less micromanagement.

Good targets for boosting include Epislon Armoured Railgun Tank; Gigantus, Grape, and Naegling Self-Propelled Rocket.

For Rangers: Everything, including Reversers
For Wing Divers: Everything except the Special Weapon category
For Fencers: Everything except shields
For Air Raiders, an in-depth explanation is required.

Power Post and other power boosters take effect the moment a weapon fires, and only work for directly fired ordinance. The ramifications are best explained with some examples.

If an Air Raider plants a bomb, then gets boosted by Power Post, then detonates the bomb, the bomb will be unboosted.

If an Air Raider places Power Post on a bomb after it has been planted, the bomb will be unboosted.

If an Air Raider is boosted, plants a bomb, then stops being boosted, the bomb will still be boosted whenever it blows up.

Every vehicle can be boosted, but it's not always easy to do so. To boost a vehicle, the radius of the Power Post must be reach the driver seat of the vehicle. This will be the position the camera centers on when the vehicle is entered. Balam in particular is very difficult to boost, and might be impossible to boost with Power Assist Gun. Offensive Territory is capable of it. The exact area to boost is somewhere in the middle of the chest area.

• Anything in the "Calling for Support" category.
  
• Stationary turrets.
  
• Life Vendors and Life Spout Gun
  
• Plasma Chargers, Plasma Streamers and Plasma Battery Guns
  
• Caravan Armoured Vehicle

Boost: ★★★★★
Duration: ★★☆☆☆
Area: ★★★☆☆

A node that that lasts for 30-60 seconds, boosting the damage of players, allies, and vehicles within range. Most units boost by 20%, but the final spec boosts by 50%.

Despite Internet rumours claiming the contrary, Power Assist Guns do not stack.

Power Assist Guns are useful all the time. Spam them on AI soldiers, allied players and your vehicles constantly. It's only a ten-second reload until you have three more of them.

Boost: ★★★☆☆
Duration: ★★★☆☆
Area: ★★★☆☆

A post that that lasts for 70 seconds, boosting the damage of players, allies, and vehicles within range. There is only one edition, boosting by 20%.

It's distinct from Power Posts in having a massive area. Three of them can be spread out to cover an even larger area, or to simply replace the last one that expired, saving on reload time.

Despite Internet rumours claiming the contrary, Offensive Territory does not stack.

Offensive Territory is handy when you have a lot of NPC soldiers with you and it's just not realistic to keep gunning all of them with Power Assist Gun

Boost: ★★★★☆
Duration: ★★★★★
Area: ★★★☆☆

A post that that lasts for 120 seconds, reducing incoming damage of players, allies, and vehicles within range. For guard posts, a lower amplifier is better. 0.7 means you take 70% damage, aka a 30% reduction. 0.4 means you take 40% damage, aka a 60% reduction.

Despite Internet rumours claiming the contrary, Guard Posts do not stack.

Guard posts can be used when making a stand, but more often than not it's more useful with a Life Vendor for the same situation despite their inability to be reloaded. Guard Posts are of more use when mounted on vehicles, as they last longer and vehicles are disposable anyway.

Boost: ★★★★★
Duration: ★★★★★
Area: ★★☆☆☆

M2, despite its low level, is the most powerful Guard Post. It's the only guard device with a 0.4 magnifier, with the others usually peaking at 0.5. For this reason, if you're bringing Guard Posts to protect your vehicle, M2 is preferable to other Guard Posts.

Boost: ★★★★☆
Duration: ★★★★☆
Area: ★☆☆☆☆

A guns that that lasts for 60 seconds, reducing incoming damage of players, allies, and vehicles within range. For guard guns, a lower amplifier is better.

Despite Internet rumours claiming the contrary, Guard Assist Guns do not stack.

Guard Assist Guns are useful all the time, and should be fired at any visible allies and vehicle with reckless abandon. They last for quite a while compared to the ten seconds it takes to reload 3 new charges.

GAG can be used when snatched by dragons and red ants. Under its influence, you will survive twice as long without interfering with any allies trying to rescue you.

Boost: ★★☆☆☆
Duration: ★★★★★
Area: ★★★★☆

A post that lasts for two minutes, reducing incoming damage of players, allies, and vehicles within range. For Zone Protectors, a lower amplifier is better.

Despite Internet rumours claiming the contrary, Zone Protectors do not stack.

Zone Protectors are pretty much only useful for making a stand somewhere. They cover a very large area but the defence is not all that much. Still a heck of a lot better than nothing.

As close as you can get to a traditional firearm for Air Raider, the Limpet Gun category consists entirely of guns that launch manually detonated sticky grenades. Compared to equivalent ranger weaponry, these mostly have longer reload times, less blast radius, and lower damage. They are considered a last-resort personal defense weapon used for fighting off small amounts of trivial enemies.

The primary purpose of Limpets is as insurance for when your plans don't go as well as expected. If you find yourself missing some credits, Limpets can be used to take out the few insects you need to refill. When a small amount of stragglers sneak past your line of defense, Limpet can bail you out. There are times when the safety net Limpet provides is worth sacrifcing more effective ordinance.

Common traits include:

• Limpets that are shot from a launcher.
  
• Remaining stuck to whatever surface it was attached to, be it the ground, a building, a vehicle, or a dragon.
  
• Being manually detonated with the zoom button.

Note that limpets planted on something that disappears, such a destroyed building or a slain enemy, will disappear along with it.

Damage: ★★☆☆☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

Limpet Guns are last-resort self-defence weapons. They've got the firepower to deal with a small handful of enemies that get too close to comfort, and that's all you should rely on them for. For larger quantities of enemies, Air Raider should instead rely on bigger ordinance and a solid plan.

When playing with other players with the right planning, you should never need to rely on Limpet Guns, but sometimes there is just no choice when it comes to cleaning up.

That being said, Limpet Gun is still a decent tool for indirect purposes. The low damage means it can be used for rocket jumps while collecting items, and it has the blast radius to get rid of buildings. You can attach it to a hector's arm in advance and blow it the moment he starts firing to throw his aim off. It can be laid on the ground somewhere you expect enemies to arrive, and then blown without ever entering their line of sight.

It can also be used for wave management. Attach them to the last enemy of a wave, then reload any other weapons, pick up any resources you need, get to a tactical position, and blow the enemy up without needing to look for it.

Limpet Guns can make a difference, just not a very big one. Sometimes, that's all you need.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Bees

Damage: ★★☆☆☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

Limpet Splendors are not very good. For the most part they're weaker than regular Limpet Guns. Adding up all the numbers might tell you otherwise, but most of the splinters are bound to miss.

That being said, it's preferable in situations where you expect to get grabbed, as the potential for self-harm is a bit lower than with Limpet Guns.

Damage: ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

Arrays of Limpet Splendors with sensors on them, detonating when enemies pass over them. In theory that sounds really cool, but in practice it just means that singular enemies leading the charge get hurt a bit, and you end up not knowing whether you have 3 or 30 undetonated detectors left when forced to manually reload.

Recommended targets:

• Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Drones

Damage: ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆

Limpet Snipers are last-resort snipers. They pack enough punch to finish of an individual ant, and the blast radius is so small that it's also all they're likely to ever do. Can be used to finish off a couple of ants nearby, or as a sniper to use against dropships.

For most sniper targets not covered from above, prefer to go for Satellite Blaster. The low damage combined with the inability to zoom makes it a poor sniping option in general.

Unlike other Limpet Guns, Limpet Sniper shots are not affected by gravity.

Note that the low blast radius makes all Limpet Snipers incapable of harming buildings.

Recommended targets:

• Dropships
  
• Flying Vehicles
  
• Deroys

Damage: ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

Limpet Launchers are last-resort grenade launchers. The blast radius makes it capable of taking out small clusters of insects, but not much else.

Its long reload time and amenic ammo capacity makes it impractical for general use. Air raids or stationary ordinance should be preferred whenever possible.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Red Ants
  
• Spiders

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

Splendor Shot is an amazing weapon for underground missions that will make Rangers, Wing Divers, and Fencers envy your firepower.

While adding up all the numbers and comparing it to equivalent Limplet Splendors or Splendor Chain Gun, you might find that it seems like Splendor Shot does equal damage while suffering from longer reload times. However, there's an aspect the numbers won't tell you: Splendor Shot's fragments travel for at least twice as long as other Splendor fragments.

The result is that the bouncing, piercing pellets have a huge chance of hitting the same target multiple times for added damage. The more narrow the corridor it's used in, the higher the damage inflicted upon everything in it will be.

The applications are limitless; Use it directly, place it on the ground below your enemies, fire it at walls to attack around corners. Pairs well with any support equipment or a set of turrets to stunlock enemies while you line them up.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Gold Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Silver Spiders
  
• Bees

Damage: ★★☆☆☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

Limpted Chain Gun is a last-resort self-defence weapon. In practical terms it's on par with regular Limpet guns.

Damage: ★★☆☆☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

An okay-ish weapon underground, but pales compared to Splendor Shot AX. The splinters disappear too soon to deal significant damage. It's quick, however, so it can be used for self-defence in the sense that you can stun enemies as you make an escape.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Drones

Starionary Equipment includes a wide variety of deadly weaponry. Since it must be placed at your current position rather than launched from a gun, careful strategies are required to make full use of them, but they generally tend to be more effective than the Limpet Guns.

Common traits include:

• Being placed at your current position, although not necessarily remaining there.
  
• Remaining stuck to whatever surface it was attached to, be it the ground, a building, a vehicle, or a dragon. (Many exceptions.)
  
• Being manually detonated or activated with the zoom button. (Some exceptions.)

Note that stationary equipment planted on something that disappears, such a destroyed building or a slain enemy, will disappear along with it.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆

In EDF 2017, C-bombs were powerful monsters capable of clearing out entire waves in a few seconds. They're a bit less useful in EDF4.1, but still not to be underestimated.

The biggest thing that's changed between games is that, just like with Limpet Guns, detonating a single bomb will empty your entire clip, forcing a 10-second reload time no matter how few bombs you actually needed to use.

Although largely outshined by Air Raids, C-Bombs can still be used to lay traps and deal massive burst damage in maps with shield bearers or in underground missions.

• You can attach C-bombs to NPCs charging into battle, blowing them when the battle fares poorly.
  
• C-bombs can be attached to vehicles, but nobody says you have to be in it. Grapes and SDL bikes will happily roll down slopes or maintain momentum if you exit mid-speed, allowing them to be rolled into crowds, shield bearers or tunnel exits.
  
• C-bombs can be dropped from helicopters. See the section for Bazelart or the guide for Advanced Helicopter Strategies and Tactics.
  
• If you attach C-bombs to an allied player and the allied player enters a vehicle, the bombs remaing suspended in the air where the allied player stood. They'll re-appear on the player once they exit the vehicle. Utilizing this an ally can drive somewhere that needs to be bombed, exit, re-enter and escape before you pop the bombs.
  
• Don't be afraid of using C-bombs as a close-combat weapon. Dodge away from the mobs in a zig-zag leaving bombs behind, and then blow-them when you're far enough away. (For C70, 4 dodge-rolls straight away is enough to escape the blast radius.)
  
  Recommended targets:
  • Black Ants
    
  • Red Ants
    
  • Spiders
    
  • Hectors
    
  • Tunnel Exits
    
  • Quadruped Fortress

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★★☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆

Unpredictable, quick and powerful, Roller Bombs are deadly weapons in the right hands and suicidal in the wrong ones.

Compared to other Air Raider weaponry, Roller Bombs reload very quickly, and the damage and blast radius are nothing to sneeze at either. It can be relied upon in close-range combat with a moderate amount of insects, or medium-range combat with a ton of distracted insects.

• Roller Bombs should be preferred for use downhill rather than uphill, as there is a danger of the bombs returning.
  
• Don't forget that Roller Bombs can be aimed vertically. It's possible to throw them over nearby obstacles by aiming upwards, and you may get a different bounce at different heights.
  
• The bouncing can be used to send Roller Bombs around corners.
  
• It's possible to stand on top of a Carrier and bounce Roller Bombs off the wings on the sides to hit enemies below. It's more or less risk-free.
  
  Recommended targets:
  • Black Ants
    
  • Red Ants
    
  • Spiders
    
  • Hectors

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆

Assault Beetles are the slower, costlier, harder-to-control cousins of Roller Bombs. Roller Bombs reload faster and move faster than Beetles, so they're hard to justify using over Roller Bombs.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆

You would think a bomb that can fly would be incredibly useful, but it turns out that's not really the case. Getting it to hit anything all is usually not worth all the hassle. You might be able to find use for it in caves with low ceilings, using them as low-grade, ceiling-planted C-bombs.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Red Ants
  
• Hectors

Damage: ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

Roller Bombs with sensors, exploding automatically. They emit splendor shrapnels rather than exploding.

As they're difficult to control, and not that powerful anyway, they sound better than they perform.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Spiders

Damage: ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆

Claymore mines that detonate from sensors, spreading bouncing, piercing pellets akin to Limpet Splendor and Patroller. The power of each mine is equivalent to a Ranger's shotgun. That doesn't sound all that bad, but in practice most of the pellets will miss.

Y-Mines shine a bit brigther when used underground where enemies can be funneled more effectively, and the bouciness of the pellets get to come into play, but most of the time C-Bombs or Splendor Shot will do the job better.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆

These Y-Mine variants are pointed upwards and have considerably more range. They're intended for use against aerial enemies and work decently for that purpose. Again, most of the pellets will miss, but if you're in that awkward position where the last set of ZE-Guns are too weak and the next set is over the level cap, they'll do okay-ish.

Of particular note is that Anti-Aircraft pellets have a lot more range than those of normal Y-mines. This does you very little when you're outside, but if you put it in a cave the pellets will persist for a lot longer. This combined with the upwards angle makes them absolutely murderous in caves.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Dragons

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

Among other things, ZE-Guns are the best anti-air option Air Raiders have available. They're turrets that can be placed, then activated. For the most part, they're highly accurate and reasonably powerful. The initial type, ZE-Gun, rotates quite slowly, but all of the R-variants aim very quickly and are more than capable of tracking high-speed fliers, bringing them down.

The biggest weakness of turrets is their poor ability at aiming vertically, combined with their persistence to try doing so anyway. Enemies flying above the turrets will lock them into uselessly firing into the air. Turrets also perform poorly against Red Ants due to their high health. When mixed with other enemies, Red Ants have a tendency to move closer to the turrets and take up most of their damage.

When dual-wielded, it's possible to always keep at least one set of ZE-Guns active. It takes 20 seconds to reload them, and they'll be activate for roughly 30, so by placing one set out 20 seconds after another you'll achieve 10 seconds of double firepower for every 30 seconds.

Turrets can be mounted on top of vehicles for mobile support, but doing so risks the turrets disappearing early if the vehicle gets destroyed, so it's not advised if the turrets are just used for defending a specific area.

There's almost no problem that can't be solved with two sets of turrets paired with a Railgun tank, diligently maintained, but their effect is best when faced with low-health enemis such as Black Ants, Spiders, Drones and Bees. Turrets are also good at surpressing hectors, throwing their aim off.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆

It's rather low-level, but ZE Sniper works well throughout normal difficulty. Since turrets will always fire at the closest target, however, for the most part the slow-turning rate makes it outclassed by ZER Guns.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆

Despite theoretically having all the power of ZEXR-Guns, ZE-Gun10 is simply too clunky for general use. Placing them all out takes nearly as much time as the reloading time, and their turn rate is very poor, If being used, each turrets should be placed far apart from eachother so they don't all trip up all at once, and so that they can stunlock as many different enemies as possible at once.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Drones
  
• Dragons
  
• Hectors

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Destructive, suicidal and unpredictable, ZE Launchers are as ill-advised as they are a necessity. For sufficiently large groups of enemies, regular ZE-Guns with their lack of splash damage will simply not be able to bring down enemies fast enough. Launchers, on the other hand, can deal with crowds of any size, inflicting damage to groups and flinging them far away with their knockback.

The drawback is that once swarmed, there's no telling which direction ZE Launchers will fire, and the risk for friendly fire is enormous. It's a good idea to put the turrets somewhere where there's a reasonable amount of cover between yourself and the turrets.

As the shots have a non-trivial amount of travel time, ZE Launcher will often miss flying enemies, and using them on a group of enemies that has fliers in it will result in many a wasted shot.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Red Ants
  
• Hectors
  
• Tunnel Exits

Special Weapons includes an assortment of oddball equipment, most of which are not weapons.

Most of them can be planted on surfaces. For an explanation of what that entails, refer to the section fro support equipment or stationary weapons.

Speed: ★★★☆☆
Coverage: ★★★☆☆

It's hard to tell when you're supposed to use standard Electromagnetic Bunkers. They lack the height to defend against aerial attack, and ants just walk straight through them. Still, they can be arranged for 360 degree coverage, or staggered to provide extra walls against hector attacks. You'll have to stand fairly close to them in order to avoid shots just passing above them, but that puts you in danger from weapons with blast radius.

While it's theoretically possible to attach Bunkers to vehicles, they have a tendency to slip off, and the Bunkers do not turn along with the vehicle.

Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Coverage: ★★★★☆

For the most part superiour to regular Bunkers. These ones are tall enough to protect against drones and, more importantly, Flying Vehicles. With strategic or redudant placement of these walls, players can get clear shots at the enemies while avoiding damage and stunlocks. Essential for missions like Air Mobilization.

Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Coverage: ★★★★★

While only one can be placed at a time, Personal Shelter is a complete 360 degree shield suitable for one person. Put it around a Ranger or a Fencer and let them tear those drones to bits.

Speed: ★★★★☆
Coverage: ★★★★☆

Tall, long, and quickly reloaded. Electromagnetic Prison is extremely handy in a lot of situations. Place it while retreating to cover your escape. Put one down when you see hectors winding up their attacks. Put them down in advance to use it as regular, super-sized Bunkers. Once you can manage the weird way they're placed, Prisons are top-tier Bunkers.

Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Coverage: ★★☆☆☆

Standing short at barely the height of a man, Borderline doesn't protect you from anything no matter how wide it is. Like anything in the Air Raider's arsenal, it's not completly without redeeming quality if you use it wisely. Put one on top of a vehicle stacked with one below for a more complete protection, or use it on top of existing cover to extend it.

Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Coverage: ★★★★★

A deployable fortress, Electromagnetic Wall provides 360 degree coverage in a huge, tall circle. All your men can stand safely inside the barrier , protected from artillery, gunfire, lasers and acid. The only problem is that its 100k hit points are stretched very thin when it has to suffer attacks from absolutely every enemy on the map. Try dual-wielding it, ready to deploy a new one as soon as the first one goes down.

Additionally, the sheer size means that drones can simply fly inside of the perimeter and start shooting.

Speed: ★★★☆☆
Coverage: ★★☆☆☆

Decoys can be placed somewhere, then activated at any point later. Since they're not launched from a gun (the non-DLC ones anyway) and have to be manually placed like turrets, they should not be brought without a solid plan.

They can be used to distract enemies while you make an escape, or lead them towards air strikes, C-bomb clusters, or other traps.

Counterintuitively, it's best not to place Decoys in the open. Instead, hide them behind as much cover as you possibly can to make them last longer. Enemies are just as aggroed at Decoys behind walls as ones in plain sight.

If you succesfully plant a Decoy on a gatling hector, the Hector will not be able to hit the Decoy and will effectively be harmless.

Decoys can be planted on vehicles to increase aggro.

Damage: ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆

Caesar Wire is a polarizing weapon. It often appears weak, but sometimes it's very strong. It's important to understand the underlying mechanics: A cable is shot out, attaching to any friend or foe it should make contact with. Every time the cable makes contact, everything attached to the wire takes damage. A cable can make contact with the same enemy multiple times, so bigger enemies are prone to taking more damage.

For maximal damage, it's best to fire Caesar Wire above enemies, allowing it to land on them, but direct shots are also helpful. After making contact, the Air Raider should strafe in circles around the group of enemies targeted to increased the amount of contact points and damage.

As it cannot cause self-harm, the Caesar Wire family can be ideal to escape from the clutches of Dragons and Red Ants.

Caesar Wire comes in rapid, shot and skytrap-variants, As the skytrap wire reacher further, it's got greater potential for contact points and therefore damage, as well as being a decent option against bees and dragons.

Recommended targets:

• Black Ants
  
• Spiders
  
• Bees
  
• Red Ants

In addition to his two weapon slots, Air Raider has a third slot reserved specificallly for bringing a vehicle.

All vehicles are called using smoke grenades, and the vast majority of them can only be called in once before needing to be reloaded by credits. For an explanation of credits, refer to the "Credits" section near the top of the guide.

After calling in, it'll take Porters roughly half a minute to fly in, hover uselessly over your position for a while, and then dropping your vehicle twenty meters away from where you wanted it.

For optimal vehicle delivery, keep the following aspects in mind:

• The vehicle will arrive facing the direction you did when you threw the signal. Be mindful of which direction that is when calling for heavy, slow-turning vehicles.
  
• Porters is highly inaccurate, position-wise. If calling for a vehicle on a rooftop or close to a building, there's a risk of the vehicle ending up stuck somewhere you can't retrieve it.
  
• You should call for the vehicle before you need it, and throw the signal at the area where you are going to be when you need it.
  
• If you forget which direction your vehicle will face, just look at the helicopter dropping it. The helicopter will face the opposite direction of your vehicle.
  
• Vehicles are much bigger targets than yourself. If you get a vehicle dropped into the middle of a crowded battle, your vehicle might not even last long enough for you to get inside of it, despite them having five times your health.
  
• You can't take damage from friendly NPC fire, and the vehicle you're driving can't either. However, unused vehicles caught in the crossfire will be affected.
  
• A single Air Raider can only keep a maximum of three vehicles. At the fourth call, whatever vehicle you called in three call-ins ago will self-destruct, regardless of whether someone's using it or not. Furthermore, the system does not care about how many vehicles exist, only that the vehicle was three call-ins ago. A specific example:
  
  • You call in a tank. We'll call this Tank 1.
    
  • You later call in two more tanks, Tank 2 and Tank 3.
    
  • Tank 2 gets destroyed by ants.
    
  • You call in another tank. As soon as Tank 4's crate lands on the ground, Tank 1 self-destructs.
    
  • Now only two tanks exist, despite the limit being 3.

A staple military vehicle, the tank category includes, well, tanks. For the most part, it's a pretty self-explanatory category.

Properties shared by Tanks include:

• Relatively good grip
  
• High powered cannon that can turn around 360 degrees but with limited vertical motion.
  
• Lots of recoil afer each shot, strong enough to push the tank back.
  
• Vehicle turn speed exceeding cannon's turn speed.
  
• Moving just as easily backwards as forwards.
  
• Turning on a dime while at a standstill.
  
• Good durability.

If you find yourself in a situation where the target you wish to shoot is a little too high up, there are a couple of ways to gain the extra aim height. Either jank forward and brake, tipping your cannon up and down, or find slanted terrain to angle your tank upwards.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★★☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Durability: ★★★★☆

A reliable, all-around solid vehicle. Gigantus is the fastest tank, and, compared to other vehicles, is relatively easy to control. As it can fire in any direction while driving in any other, it's an excellent vehicle for kiting. For sheer survival power and mobility, Gigantus is hard to beat.

Really, the only thing that can be said against Gigantus is that there's not enough of it. There's only one weapon, and there's only room for the driver. However, what little is there has been tuned to
perfection.

Essentially a fast-moving, armoured rocket launcher, Gigantus is equipped with a cannon that fires explosive Howitzer shells. The damage is usually plenty to kill insects, and the blast radius is enough to kill plenty of them. It doesn't take too many shots to bring down heavier enemies, either.

Some drawbacks are the somewhat slow firing rate, and getting used to aiming it on the move. Additionally, like all tanks, Gigantus cannot aim very far upwards and as such struggles with flying enemies that get too close. This is best countered using ZE-Guns.

Gigantus boasts solid traction between the thread and the ground, and you'll rarely find it to slide out of control. It's capable of climbing mountains with some elbow grease and know-how, and the cannon can be shot backwards for a minor speed boost. While it works well in terrain, it's still possible to run too fast into jagged ruins and flip the Gigantus, but that goes for almost any vehicle.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★★★
Durability: ★★★★☆

Most Gigantus come in an equivalent Custom variant. They shoot a lot longer, but the rate of fire is decreased, and the recoil is greater. Driving performance is otherwise the same, making it a possible alternative to Epsilon Armored Railgun if you lack the luxury of standing still.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★★☆
Range: ★☆☆☆☆
Durability: ★★★★☆

A Gigantus that shoots acid. Not bad against Hectors when playing Normal mode.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★★★
Durability: ★★★★☆

A superb sniper weapon that will inspire envy in Fencers and Rangers alike. It has superlative capabilities when it comes to taking out priority targets, or swathes of heavy enemies lined up. For anything smaller, Epsilon pairs up very nicely with a set of ZE-Guns taking out trash mobs.

Essentially an armoured Gallic Heavy Cannon, Epsilon can one-shot most things, and two-shot most others. It pierces clean through as many enemies as you can line up, and knocks them clean out of your sight and back into space. Hectors hit by it will recoil immensly, and this can be used to make them miss you at key moments. Being a tank, you can take some hits while steadying your aim and don't have to worry about that pesky stunlock and knockback that those other losers on your team have to deal with.

The biggest drawbacks with Railgun is it's slow aiming, easily countered by aiming with the whole body rather than just the turrets, and its inability to aim upwards. Dropships and particularly Quadruped Fortresses can be incredibly tricky to line up shots on with an Armoured Railgun.

Mostly for laughs, each side of Epsilon is equipped with weak, inaccurate, short-range machine guns. Other players can man them, but they're usually better off using their own weapons. However, the gun ports can still be used for cover, and an Air Raider can use them in emergencies to take out small amounts of enemies that have gotten too close.

When used for stationary sniping, it's possible to dual- or even triple-wield Epsilon for increased firerate. Simply park two of them next to eachother and jump between them after each shot. Even taking into account extra time spent aiming, your firerate, and therefore overall damage will improve a lot.

Even when not hopping between tanks, it's a good idea to step out of Epsilon after each shot in order to reload any weaponry that needs to be reloaded. However, one must be careful in order to not get hit by hector bombardment or other incoming fire while doing so.

Epsilon Armoured Railgun has all the traveling capabilities of Gigantus, only much slower. This makes it even easier to control, however, and the speed still beats on-foot travel time even while rolling. Since it takes passengers, it can be used to transport Rangers, other Air Raiders, or even ill-equipped Fencers. Wing Divers can seek shelter in the gun ports while recharging their energy.

As the Railgun's mounted weapon makes it exceptionally top-heavy, the tank is extremely prone to flipping over if it falls. Be very careful going down rough terrain, and try to slide down sideways.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Durability: ★★★★★

A thread-borne fortress. Its flashiness exceeds its utility by a long-shot, but it's so awesome you can't help but want to use it.

The Requiem Gun definitely looks like the main attraction on the Titan, but it's possibly the weakest link in the whole rig. While the damage is on par with an Epsilon Armoured Railgun, and the blast radius is insane, it fires slowly, shifts the entire tank way out of position, and the shot moves like molasses making it very hard to actually hit anything. It's spectacular to use every time.

The machine gun in front, usable by the driver is powerful and practical, although admittedly a bit boring.

Titan is wasted if not used with other players, and either side comes equipped with a heavy, quick-firing cannon of some variety, as well as either homing missiles or dispersal grenades. All of them are powerhouses, but they're very difficult to aim.

All in all, Titan is fun but it's usually better to call a Proteus.

An additional bonus with Titan is that it's very big, yet possible to climb on top on, making it a good platform for Rangers to snipe from.

Basically non-existent, but Titan has some mobility perks. It rams straights through building, and if your intention is to go backwards then Requiem Gun will push you back entire city blocks.

A highly varied category, ground vehicles contains all wheeled or threaded vehicles that are not categorized as tanks.

Properties shared by Ground Vehicles include:

• Terrible grip. (Except for Caravan)
  
• Room for at least one passenger of any class. (Except for Naegling)
  
• Poor durability. (Except for Caravan)

Damage: ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★★★☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Durability: ★★★☆☆

Difficult to control and hard to kite with. Grape sells itself as an APC, but the driver will need a lot of training in order to use it as one.

Grape is usually equipped with a rapidly firing light cannon, sometimes capable of penetration. It has a severely limited range of movement, and cannot fire backwards. As Grape is even more difficult to control when driving backwards, this is a problem. Optimal use either involves standing completely still when firing, or driving very wide circles around your enemies.

While very fast, Grape suffers from poor traction. Earlier models are also very bad at driving uphill, although this gets betters in the later variants. There's room for the entire team in a single Grape, should you have a team consisting entirely of Rangers or poorly equipped Fencers.

A huge mobility bonus with Grape is that it's almost impossible to topple. No matter what happens to this action truck, Grape will nearly always land on its wheels, and right itself back up again. This makes Grape ideal for driving downhill.

If parked on a slope, Grape will roll down it at unsalvagable speeds. This can be exploited by placing bombs or turrets on it in advance.

Speed: ★★★☆☆
Durability: ★★★★☆

What it lacks in speed and weaponry, Caravan Armoured Vehicle makes up for in endless utility. It can make a difference no matter which situation you are in.

It's technically possible to mount turrets on any vehicle, but Caravan with its flat structure, lack of guns getting in the way, and solid armor is exceptionally suited for it. Place some ZE-Guns on the top, activate, roll into the enemy crowds and enjoy the massacre.

Being a particularly tall, mobile structure, Caravan makes for a very good platform from which your allies can get a vantage point and snipe. Whenever they need healing, it's just a matter of popping in the back to restore their health. Later versions get a decent amount of speed, and can be used to make retreat with everyone safely protected in the back.

Even while not entered, Caravan can be used as a makeshift cover from drone and hector fire. One can enter tunnels and leave the Caravan in front to block enemies from entering, or, if daring, ram it straight into a hector/shield bearer in order to get kicked to safety, far away from the enemies.

While not the fastest, Caravan's low speed makes it extremely capable at traversing terrain. If moved backwards, there is almost no slope that cannot be overcome by its threads. Even if you can't drive up, Caravan can be mounted and jumped from to reach hard-to-reach boxes.

There's still a lot of danger of toppling the Caravan on its side, rendering it immobile, so drive carefully.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Durability: ★★☆☆☆

With all the rigidity and manouverability of a paper boat, Naegling is something of a glass cannon that needs a lot of protection to unleash its devastating weaponry.

As a missile launcher capable of locking onto ten enemies at once, Naegling will wreak havok to flying enemies if given a chance. However, its tall stature, poor mobility, and low health means it needs to be used from very far away from the enemy. Even a single enemy can take out the Naegling if given a chance. Decoys, allies, bunkers and anything else you can use to avoid damage must be used to make the most of this truck.

Equipped with a Guide Beacon Gun, it's possible to focus all ten missiles on the same target. With this tactic, a Naegling in offline mode can be used to take down an Erginus.

Naeglins slides badly and moves slowly but, like Grape, it's very difficult to topple. Usually Nageling won't be move very far and can for most purposes be thought of as s stationary missile turret. Like with Gigantus and Epsilon, the body turns faster than the turrets, and this should be used for quick aiming.

Damage: ★★☆☆☆
Speed: ★★★★★
Range: ★★☆☆☆
Durability: ★☆☆☆☆

Widely despised and misunderstood, SDL1 bike is an amazing survival tool once you learn to control it.

Around half the maps in EDF have one thing in common: There's a wide, square road going the full perimeter around it. When cruising along this road at top speed in an SDL1, most of the game's enemies will have no way of catching up with you.

SDL1 has a gunner seat on the side. The gun itself is not all that strong, and has a poor turn radius, but it's only there for briefly stunning enemies that get in your way. The real draw behind SDL1 is simply to get you between the four corners of the map as quickly as possible. From there you and your friend can step out, launch some potshots, and call some airstrikes. Start driving again before your enemies get too close and you can clear the mission while taking no damage whatsoever.

Any class can benefit from an SDL1 ride. Rangers and Air Raiders are obvious enough, but even Wing Divers can start using their ridiculous Monster-snipers and Plasma Weapons, recharging from the safety of your bike seat. Fencers can equip nothing but mortars and gatling guns, becoming stationary turrets that you deploy in corners for brief periods.

While doing this, it's a good idea to regularly call in new bikes at your pit stops, making sure to face them down the road. Don't wait for them to land before moving on. Instead, just drive a full lap around the map before picking up the fresh bike. Bikes are so cheap that you should never worry about running out of them.

It's strategies like these that make it possible to beat missions with the starting health.

In order to use an SDL1, you will probably have to use a gamepad with an analogue stick. I haven't made any attempts at driving one with a keyboard, but I'm guessing the primary reason people instantly dismiss bikes is because they don't have any means of throttling slowly.

SDL1 will slide out of control if you start it out at full speed. In order to drive it properly, it's essential to start accelerating slowly, and any sideways movement must be done in short, careful adjustments. While the movement along straight ground is unbelievably fast, SDL1 struggles getting uphill, and even the smallest bump in the road will send you spinning, as well as damaging the bike.

If at any point you feel like you're not in full control of the bike, carefully slow down. Even when not moving at maximum velocity, SDL1 is still more than capable of outrunning most insects. Always plan your turns well in advance and learn to work with the bike if you starts sliding around. It doesn't take too much practice before you're able to make quick 90 degree turns without taking damage.

Oh, and the level 18 SDL1 Bike is completely unusable. Don't even try it.

Helicopters are a controversial category. It is widely disliked for being hard to control, but can be very powerful when mastered.

Properties shared by Helicopters include:

• Limitless flight.
  
• Sluggish response time.
  
• Low armour.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★★★★☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Durability: ★★★☆☆

Widely despised and misunderstood, Bazelart is likely the most powerful one-man vehicle the game has to offer.

Equipped with a pair of devastating gatling guns and homing missiles from hell, little can stand up to Bazelart's firepower. Line up with hectors and blast them backwards. Sweep around ants and blow their bits out. Hover over tunnel exits and cave them in instantly. Fly up to Erginus face and shred his cheeks. Laugh as Retarius try to grab you while you tear their homes up and pummel holes through them. The double machine guns individually carry a ton of power and can even penetrate through enemies, making them ideal for crowd control.

Bazelart can even deal decently with aerial enemies as long as you have some extra distractions. Although the missiles aren't particularly plentiful, they pack a punch and can make a difference. For instance, they can be used to surpress waves emerging from tunnel exits while you're destroying it.

In addition to Bazelart's own weaponry, it's possible to drop personal ordinance from helicopters. By popping out briefly while it's descending and then instantly going back in, there's time to drop grenades, air strikes, bombs and turrets. With enough patience, they can be even be reloaded in mid-air. Helicopters carry a lot of use, and this is all very well-covered by the excellent Advanced Helicopters Strategies and Tactics guide.

Some variants of Bazelart fire unguided napalm missiles rather than homing missiles. These are useful for crowd control and damage over time on larger targets.

It's no secret that Bazelart is strong, but it takes skill and foresight to manoeuver it. Any motion must be planned and prepared well in advance. As with anything else in Air Raider, twitch reaction means little compared to a good plan. If you want to strafe over a group of enemies with machinegun fire, you have to prepare your incoming trajectory well in advance. If you want to descend, you need to let go of the throttle ten seconds beforehand. If you want to take off, you better have called in the chopper and planted turrets to cover your takeoff a minute in advance.

But it's all worth it. With infinite flight and heavy machine guns, a skilled Bazelart pilot will make Fencers and Wing Divers alike green with envy.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★★★
Durability: ★★★☆☆

This Bazelart variant fires 5-shot bursts of incredibly powerful laser cannons. The range is astounding and can be used to snipe enemies from across the map. It fires a bit slowly, so it's not quite as useful for fighting insects and for close-combat in general, but the long range has enormous applicability against enemies that regular Bazelart has difficulties with.

Damage: ★★★☆☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆
Durability: ★★★☆☆

Considerably slower and weaker than Bazelart, Nereid is more widely appreciated due to its auto-acquisition cannon making it much easier to actually hit anything at all.

While an automatically aimed turrets sounds nice, it has a tendency to lag behind moving enemies, wasting your shots. Additionally, the shots are rather weak, and there's no way to control what exactly gets shot at. It works okay primarily against smaller crowds of black ants, as spiders can shoot back and red ants can tank a lot of shots.

The unguided bombs are incredibly powerful, but the camera and random spread make them impossible to aim at anything specific. Still, they're not bad for launching into crowds or softening up a tunnel exit.

Everything about the Bazelart applies to Nereid in regards to mobility. However, less care needs to be taken in order to line up shots, since the helicopter will do that for you.

A nice bonus is that in a pinch, Nereid can sometimes shoot enemies that are really close before it's managed to take off. This is helpful since Nereid spends considerably longer to take off in the first place.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★☆☆☆☆
Durability: ★★★☆☆

A fantastic flying machine of death that sadly has no Inferno-capable variant. Fire Nereid will make mincemeat out of hardest mode for you. The auto-acquistion blaze gun boasts ridiculous damage, and, being a flamethrower, covers a very wide area. This makes it capable of stunlocking and subsequently murdering huge crowds of insects.

Its bombs drop straight down, making it capable of devastating crowds, or surpressing and destroying tunnel exits. If hovering over a tunnel exit, the blaze gun will also supress anything coming out of it.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Durability: ★★★★☆

A veritable flying fortress, Brute excels at any situation you can use it in

Armed with rapid-fire, piercing cannons with each shots matching up with the power of Lysander, Brute can take out priority targets like nobody's business.

Hell, you don't even need to fly the thing. Just call one down with the side faced towards the enemy for an amazing stationary sniper turret. Brute's cannon has an unmatched range of motion on its cannon and can fire all the way up, down, left and right. Some correction must be done when aiming, and you need to compensate for the dropoff, but the Brute has plenty of ammo capacity so you can just keep on shooting until you get it right.

While there are two turrets on the Brute, it's usually used at max effect with just a single gunner, a pilot, and solid coordination. Get up in the air, destroy any hectors, tunnel exits, and other priority targes, then expend your remaining ammo to thin down the crowds on the ground before finding a reasonably safe spot to settle down and fight off the stragglers.

Don't forget that, just like with any helicopter, Brute can be used to deploy air strikes and other ordinance. Howitzer (Artillery) is particularly effective at wiping out enemies gathering below your Brute.

While it's very sluggish, the pilot of Brute doesn't have to worry about aiming at anything and can use his full concentration on just flying well. The Brute's cannon moves reasonably fast and can hit things well. That's all that matters.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★☆☆☆☆
Durability: ★★★★☆

An incredibly powerful crowd control tool, Brute Hell Flame will serve you well throughout Hard Mode. The range of the fire cannon is just enough to hit the core of the Mothership, should you want to use it for that.

Every vehicle on legs can be found in this category.

Properties shared by Power Suits include:

• Extremely good grip.
  
• Slow walking speed.
  
• High durability. (Except Depth Crawler)
  
• Multiple, very powerful weapons.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★☆☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Durability: ★★★★☆

A bipedal weapons platform, Vegalta trades mobility and precision for raw firepower.

Vegalta packs quite a punch. The earliest models come only with a gatling gun and a rocket cannon, but later editions add a a missile pod and a flamethrower. While this makes it suitable against any type of enemy, each weapon is less powerful for its individual task than a specialized vehicle would be, and the stronger weapons tend to have severely limited ammo.

The gatling gun suffers from poor accuracy, making it unsuitable at long distance. The rockets shoot at a completely different angle from the gatling, meaning that the two cannot be fired at the same time efficiently, and additionally the rocket supply is very short. The missiles are decent, but only a few can be fired at a time, and there's a long cooldown between bursts. While the flamethrower is powerful and covers a wide cone, it's only usable in situations where you're about to be overrun and destroyed. In those cases, the flamethrower is simply not enough to prevent your destruction, but can stave it off for a few more moments.

Ultimately the standard Vegalta's weaponry lacks the accuracy to fight from long range, and turns too slowly to be used at short range. It must rely on allies and tools maintaining aggro at just the right distance on front of it, but if it's being done by allies then extreme care needs to be taken not to hit your own men with the explosive weapons

Works best against Hectors and Black Ants.

Vegalta moves quite slowly, but after walking for a bit it's possible to gain a fair amount of momentum. Additionally, jump jets allow you to jump on top of structure, or climb some cliffs. The biggest problem with Vegalta's mobilty as well as combat capabilities is the poor turn rate. If you need to turn around to go somewhere with Vegalta, it's far faster to exit the vehicle, call a new Vegalta at the position you're going to, and head there on foot until it arrives.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★☆☆☆☆
Durability: ★★★☆☆

With two flamethrowers and a pair of piercing flak cannons, the fire-variants of Vegalta can kill anything within range in a matter of seconds. While it's considerably nimbler than any other Vegalta, the health has also been severely reduced.

Canister Shots have a lot of range, but the spread make them a poor long-range option that can nevertheless be used in a pinch. Unfortunately, the ammunition is quite limited.

Extremely well-suited to battle Red Ants, and works pretty well against Retarius.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Durability: ★★★★☆

A walking artillery station, for a given defintion of "walking". Vegalta Heavy is the slowest Vegalta variant. It's equipped with enough explosives to level a city.

This should be called at an extremely safe distance from the enemy and used as backline support. With some training, you can effectively act as air raids, leveling city blocks and obliterating enemies within them. The biggest problem is that it's easy to hit your allies with the volleys, and that you're pretty much helpless should the enemy catch up to you.

Vegalta Heavy turns and moves so slowly that you might as well not bother. As the points rack up, and they will, call in more of them facing in any other directions you might need to fire in.

Well suited for land-based enemy, as long as they are far enough away.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★★☆☆
Durability: ★★★★☆

Designed as an anti-air vehicle, Vegalta Missile is good for most things. The missiles are a nice bonus, but the biggest boon to it is the pair of accurate revolver cannons that can be aimed quickly. Vegalta Missile may not move as fast as the Fire-variant, but it turns nicely.

Great for Bees, Drones, Black Ants, and Spiders.

Damage: ★★★★☆
Speed: ★★★☆☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆
Durability: ★☆☆☆☆

Depth Crawler is something of a min-maxed vehicle. What it lacks in velocity, it makes up for in agility. What it lacks in health, it makes up for in firepower. What it gains in being able to crawl along any surface, it loses in ability to see what the hell is going on.

While the standard gatling gun on depth crawler is fairly powerful, it suffers from some spin-up time. Other vehicles has a spin-up time on its gatlings as well, but Depth Crawler suffers from it in particularly due to its short range.

There are many variants, with the primary difference being in which secondary weapon is equipped. All of them will have the standard FK200 Gatling for a primary weapon. No matter what it comes equipped with, whether short-range or long-range, Depth Crawler is a nimble beast that can turn as quickly as if you were on foot, and none of its weapons suffer from recoil.

All this ease of use comes at a price, however, as Depth Crawler can be destroyed in a single attack, and lacks the velocity to make escapes. While a dodge move exists, it's almost never a good idea to use it. Weapons can't be fired while dodging, and there's a brief cooldown after the dodge before you can move or shoot again. Generally, retreat is best handled by walking away backwards and stunning enemies with the gatling.

In a Depth Crawler, you fight or you die.

For the most part, Depth Crawler is as easy to control as the Air Raider himself. The weird parts are the vertical aiming, which doesn't affect the gatling nearly as much as the secondary weapons, and the surface-crawling.

When crawling on walls and ceilings, the camera is not affected, nor are the controls. However, since the controls are relative the player and not the camera, this can make it confusing to walk in the ceiling in particular; left will become right, and right will be left, relative to the view.

Depth Crawler can jump, and will cling to whatever it lands on no matter which orientation. This can sometimes turn the Crawler around completely, and the effect is fairly disorienting.

Particularly when crawling on ceilings and walls, the camera can make it quite hard to aim and walk at the same time. It's possible with practice, but in general it's easier and just as well to simply stop before shooting. Firing from the ceiling is often practical, as it will let you shoot over allied soldiers, and you'll be less likely suffer friendly fire yourself.

Crawling on walls and ceilings can also make it more difficult for flying enemies to hit you.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Range: ★★★★☆
Durability: ★★★★★

A walking fortress, Proteus is a powerhouse that should be used in any mission that will give credits enough for it, provided you have allies with your to man it.

Equipped with two rapid-fire, explosive cannons, anything that can be aimed at from the Proteus can swiflty be destroyed. There's a missile launcher with a ridiculous amount of lock-ons for good measure.

The biggest drawback is that if the Proteus is not manned, you must go through a long-winded bootup phase when entering, even if you just pop out and right back in again. This means that Proteus is for the most part unusable if you're playing alone.

The range of motion on the side cannons are quite limited, especially vertically, and someone will have to man the driver's seat in order to get the best shots constantly lined up.

As it packs a lot of health, Proteus can survive almost indefinitely against robotic enemies. Hectors, Deroys, Drones, and Flying Vehicles are nothing to the might of Proteus, but it can still get chewed up pretty fast if swarmed by insects. Fortunately, it is no problem for Proteus to simply blast its way out of such situations, as it can shrug off a quite decent amount of friendly-fire.

If you're using it alone, call the proteus slightly slanted from the area you want to attack with it. This'll give the arm slanted towards the enemy the optimal range of motion, and you won't have to switch between ports to attack enemies on the left and right wings.

Proteus will need a designated driver with no weapons in order to move and turn. It can build up an okay amount of momentum given enough time to walk, but it's primarily best for just standing ground and defending. That being said, it's still capable of waltzing into the range of shieldbearers and blasting away whatever's there in missions such as Brute Force.

Damage: ★★★★★
Speed: ★☆☆☆☆
Range: ★★☆☆☆
Durability: ★★★★★

A gigantic, Godzilla-punching mech. It's mostly good for punching Erginus or sending Hectors flying into orbit, but can be used as a giant, dragon-punching decoy in a pinch.

Some variants of Balam are equipped with machineguns or lasers, but they don't tend to make much of a difference. The primary weapon of Balam is its fists. As the only vehicle-weapon with infinite ammo, they're quite good for prolonged fights against giant lizards and giant robots alike.

Two combos exist: 1-2-1-2- ad infinitum, and 1-1-2-1. It doesn't matter if 1 is the right or the left hand, as long as it's the hand you started punching with. After the first punch, the 1-2-1-2 infinite combo will do the same amount of damage for every punch. Relative to other weapons, it's quite a respectable amount, but the other combo is definitely what you should be going for, 1-1-2-1 has good coverage in its swings, but more importantly each successive hit will inflict massively increased damage compared to the previous one.

Since the equipment screen doesn't mention, these are the damage values for the combos of each Walking Fortress Balam:

It can be worth it to miss with the third hit if it means being able to hit with the fourth one instead, but it's a big risk to take in case you miss with both punches. You can additionally delay each punch in the combo slightly, allowing you to adjust the timing for your hits and letting you move closer for each strike. Timing your combos is vital for succesfully brawling with Erginus.

Balam can also stomp, but that pretty much never does anything. The radius of the stomp is deceptively small, even if it'll surely crush whatever you may hit.

It's possible to do a taunting move with Balam. If performed right before getting hit, it's possible to prevent getting knocked over.

While not helpful for most missions even if you can afford it, Balam is decent at the task it was designed for: fighting Erginus. It is also pretty much invincible against an arbitrary amount of Hectors, such as the scenario faced in Giant Robots.

It can be used against insects by gathering them all up on the Balam and calling in an airstrike on its position. The air raider needs to be riding the Balam most of the time in order for this to work, but its health should be good for at least two strikes.

Balam moves like molasses. One perk with it is that it's the only vehicle capable of moving through the ocean, although it won't necessarily be able to get back up from it.

To list every single mission in this guide would be unecessary. In general, you pick a set of weapons that you feel comfortable with and suits the situation (a pair of Strafe Plan combined with a railgun tank is a solid set for most missions). It's not a guarantee that any mission not listed in this guide will be easy, only that it hasn't been found necessary to use anything other than core skills, good weapons, patient kiting, and tactics mentioned for other missions to beat them.

Not every mission listed will be particularly difficult, some might be mentioned because strategies exist to beat them with great speed and ease, allowing for repeated completions should it be desirable to collect weapons and armour from them.

In addition, these guides will not always be complete from start to finish, and might only highlight difficult sections within the missions. It is assumed that the reader of this guide is reasonably familiar with the game and has already attempted the mission before.

Should you struggle with a mission not listed in this guide, it might get added, possibly with a video, if you mention it in the comments and specify an amount of health you're trying to attempt it with.

Any tactic mentioned here has been personally executed in offline single player. The recommended equipment setting will specify the amount of armour that was used, the exact variant of the weapons used as well. More armour and higher level versions of the weapon will often help, but the listed equipment and armour has been deemed reasonable.

Recommended equipment:

• 2000 armour
  
• 2x Strafe Plan B
  
• Vegalta Missile Gun

Assuming you start facing north, retreat to the south-east. With your back to the buildings, call your Vegalta. Take cover inside of the alleys until the Vegalta arrives. After it does, man it and start shooting down ships with both guns. Avoid using missiles, as it will destroy the buildings you use to cover your back.

When the first wave of enemy reinforcements have descended, throw one Strafe Plan diagonally. Whenever you Vegalta gets destroyed, take cover in the alley again and wait for the mission to advance.

In the final wave when the radio chatter yells about there being too many gun ships, start alternating your Strafe Plans aimed close to your men in the park. Stagger them out so that you throw one once the lines appear on the map for the previous one, or whenever you can afford them, whichever comes last.

By the time you run out of credits, the amount of gunships should be managable enough to survive through dodging, hiding, and hunting health packs until the Self-Propelled Rockets appear and finish the mission for you

Recommended equipment:

• 2000 armour
  
• 2x ZER-Guns
  
• Epsilon Armoured Railgun ME2

Call in the tank. Rush ahead and recruit the men. Plant all the turrets. When the tank arrives, get in. The trifecta of NPCs distracting the enemy, turrets protecting your NPCs, and your tank shielding you from minor nuisances is a highly effective general strategy that you can use for a large portion of the game.

Shoot down the building to your right with the sign on top, as it will block your shot otherwise. Activate the first set of turrets when the ants arrive, then start shooting at the low dropship passing overhead. If executed perfectly, you should be able to take it down in one opening. Otherwise, you'll get it next time it open.

Active the second set of turrets. Between each shot with your tank, exit in order to get some reload time on any unreloaded weaponry, but pop back into the tank when the cooldown period for the shot is over. Call in more tanks as soon as you can afford them.

The mission gets considerably easier the faster you can shoot the ships down. If you find yourself running out of men, the map's edge in each cardinal direction will spawn more NPCs for you when you reach there.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 Armour
  
• 2x ZEXR-Gun
  
• Depth Crawler S Range Custom

Turn around 180 and call your Depth Crawler. Place one set of turrets on top of it, activate, and crawl up to the tunnel the ants are spewing out from. Crawl up sideways and keep your distance from the bridge while ascending, using your weaponry to clear out enemies from the cave so that it's safe to approach. Your turrets should be able to most of the heavy lifting in the case of ZEXR Guns. With the lower level ZER-Guns, the tactic is substantially riskier.

Enter the tunnel that proceeds straight from the bridge and follow it until you reach a hall. In the center of the hall, a huge amount of spiders will spawn once the NPCs finish off enough enemies outside. Point your Depth Crawler towards the center of the room and fire with all weaponry as soon as the spiders appear. If successfully executed, every single spider will die in one swoop.

There will be a second wave of ants spawnning in the same spot, and you need to prepare for it. Call a fresh Depth Crawler, place a set of turrets around the room and stand by. Once your NPCs are dead, enemies will start finding their way to you. When that happens, activate the turrets. Stand by your Depth Crawler, ready to alpha strike the next spawned wave and don't get distraced by anything. After it does, light it upand take out as many as you can. It's likely a handful will survive and take out your crawler.If this happens, deploy your second set of turrets that should be fully reloaded if not already placed at this point.

Should you still be alive, slowly advance out the way you came from, placing turrets to protect you from either end. Clean up the remaining enemies.

Recommended equipment:

• 2000 Armour
  
• Electromagnetic Prison
  
• ZEXR-Gun
  
• Walking Fortress Balam Laser Fort

Place the prisons in three lanes next to eachother so that they cover the intersection in front of you. Place the turrets inside the intersection and activate them, letting them kill hectors for you. Use the bunkers and the map to avoid getting hit while drawing the hectors towards your kill zone.

The turrets will not be able to kill enough hectors for you in one burst. so reload them while you keep using your bunkers to survive. The second time you place your turrets they should be able to earn enough credits to call in a Balam.

After you enter the Balam, you've won.

Recommended equipment:

• 500 Armour
  
• Satellite Blaster D
  
• Satellite Blaster D
  
• Walking Fortress Balam Laser Fort

This is very similar and arguably easier, but you risk running out of laser.

Call both lasers in and continously switch between them to aim both at the same time in order to kill hectors while moving away from your NPCs. Keep killing until you can afford Balam, then punch everything.

Here's the strategy being executed online solo with slightly stronger gear and enemies with well over twice the health and damage of offline:

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 armour
  
• 2x ZERA-Gun
  
• EF24 Bazelart Vulture 2

Set up turrets where you start. Call in the helicopter and take off as soon as you can. Once in a while during this mission, find a quiet spot to settle down and swap choppers. Pay attention to when vehicle call-ins no longer function

When the shields appear, circle around the the hectors and go straight for the bearers. Once they're down, your men will have a much easier time surviving and aiding you against the gunships later. Once the insects arrive, prioritize red ants as they are the biggest liability to yourself and your men.

When the drones come, try to be near your men when place all of your turrets and activate them before taking off and destroying the drones. You should be able to tear through them pretty easily.

The rest of the mission should be straightforward.

Should you still struggle with the mission, approach it when you have access to ZEXR-Gun and Bazelart Powered/Vulture F

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 armour
  
• Tempest S1A
  
• Free slot, use according to what party members want or have. Possibly a second Tempest!
  
• Epsilon Armored Blast Railgun E

Call in the Tempest on the cluster of hectors ahead. Assist your party members by shooting hectors with the tank. When the shield bearers appear, your party members will have to break in there and deal with it. Your job is to stay far away from danger. Shoot whatever you can shoot with the tank. If your second equip is a Strafe Plan, you can call it at the shieldbearers to make them briefly contract.

When the drones appear, call in the Tempest again. Its slow appeareance is an advantage, because it allows you to call it in before air raids stop working, but it'll appear after all the drones have gathered in one place. Aim the tempest at the center of mass of the drones, eliminating most of them.

Recommended equipment:

• 5000 armour
  
• 2 * ZEXR-Gun
  
• Depth Crawler IV Custom

Advance slowly. Put a set of turrets before each chokepoint, then get in the Depth Crawler and battle it out. Tricky part is the great hall at the very end. You'll want to sneak up as close as you can without alerting them, place a set of turrets, then double back to where you fought the spiders.

Set up your second set of turrets, activate the first one. Once the bugs have reached your chokepoint, activate the second set and manually reload the first. Stand behind your depth crawler, ready to shoot down anything your turrets do not catch. You want to watch the cave ahead of dark purple ant that monopolize your turrets and quick blips on the radar indicating golden ants sneaking through your defenses via the ceiling.

Recommended equipment:

• 2500 armour
  
• YDX Anti-Airstrike Impulse
  
• Limpet Splendor ZD
  
• Depth Crawler S Range Custom

Lay a few lanes of Impulse while retreating, then use Splendor to clear the corridor behind you. Call Depth Crawler and keep moving until you get some distance.

Reload the mines, funnel the brunt of the remaining enemies into them.


Most of the enemies should be dead at this point. Clean up.

Recommended equipment:

• 5000 armour
  
• Life Vendor ZD
  
• Splendor Shot AX

Plant a Life Vendor right where you are and start launching Splendor Shots down the halls. Strafe a circle inside the room to dodge most damage. Observe the map and keep on the less populated sides. Stack a stream of Life Vendors so that your health stays reasonably steady.

Recommended equipment:

• 2000 armour
  
• Electromagnetic Prison
  
• Limpet Detector ME / Splendor Shot AX
  
• Depth Crawler S Range Custom

Most of this mission is nothing to write home about. Recruit men, keep them alive with with bunkers, trap the walls with Limpet Detector (our outright kill everyone with Splendor Shot AX should you have it. When using Depth Crawler, tap the flamethrower sparingly just to get stunlocks in and make your kills with the shotgun and gatling. The flamethrower ammo depletes extremely quickly.

Once you're before the queen's hall, deploy the prisons so that it extends through the wall and covers the opening into the hall, preventing acid from spewing out. Kill all the insects first, then worry about the queens. You can always retreat to reload your prisons should they be fading away. Retreat early so you don't get stunlocked trying to escape. Whether with Depth Crawler or with limpets, the queens can not touch you and will go down soon enough.

Recommended equipment:

• 2000 armour
  
• 2 x Strafe Plan C
  
• Epsilon Armour Blast Railgun

Throw a strafe plan far enough ahead that it won't hit your and your men. Summon a tank, then recruit the men ahead.

Once you can see the paths for the strafe plan on the radar, throw another one. Keep doing this. The enemies will follow the bomber planes to the other end of the map, leaving you safe for the most part.

Between air raids, enter your tank and shoot important targets. Start with the hectors, move on to lines of red ants. Once there are few enough left, cease your air raids and let them come close so you and your men can finish the first wave.

Repeat this process for the second wave.

Once all the queens are dead, advance carefully with your men and shoot down the dropships using your tank.

This video demonstrates the strategy using stronger equipment than required, but is also performed with online multipliers, overall making it more difficult.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 Armour
  
• Power Assist Gun M2
  
• Satellite Blaster D
  
• Epsilon Armour Blast Railgun

Throw the tank down the street past the warehouses. Run over there and then wait for the genocide gun to descend. Power up the tank and shoot the genocide gun down.

At this point, your survival depends on your men in the park, but their survival depends on you. Shoot down the closest dropship and any hectors conveniently placed hectors. Drive into the park until you can get a shot at the second dropships, which you must also shoot down. Call in more railgun tanks as you do this, keeping up a stockpile.

You can use Satellite Blaster on the plates to destroy them, which will give you a nice boost of credits, as well as reducing overall incoming fire. There's no need to maintain the laser, just call it and forget about it, allowing the plates to spin into the laser on its own.

After taking care of the biggest threats to your men, start concentrating on the core. Whenever the core is not exposed, you can shoot down plates or elite drones.

When the second phase starts, just start bursting down the core until the mothership is defeated.

Recommended equipment:

• 1000 Armour
  
• Power Assist Gun MG
  
• Epsilon Armour Blast Railgun

Partner equipment:

• Ranger, 1000 Armour
  
• 2x Nova Buster ZD

Call the tank, power it up, shoot down the genocide gun with it.

Boost your partner, have them fire both nova busters into the core.

Share a high-five.

Recommended equipment:

• 5000 armour
  
• Satellite Blaster E
  
• Strafe Plan C
  
• E551 Gigantus ZA or Armored Vehicle Grape RZ

There are 7 Tunnel Exits in the map. After 4 are destroyed, they will spawn one batch of mutants each.

• The 2 Exits closest to your start position spawn Black Ants/Golden Ants
  
• The 2 Exits on each flank spawn Spiders/Silver Spiders
  
• The 2 Exits furthest away spawn Bees/Red Bees
  
• The 1 Exit in the center spawns Red Ants/Dark Ants

Call a strafe plan in the 11 o'clock direction. Turn around and call your vehicle. Get to the main road, turn left, drive to the end of the map, then turn left again and drive back into the river. From here, call strafe plans every time you can afford them in the general direction of your men fighting the giant bugs on the left bank. This will aid your men, refill your credits, and turn enemy attention away from you.

Use your Satellite Blaster to snipe down the tunnel exits you find to be the most dangerous. It is recommended to start with the bees, as red bees are not to be trifled with. From there it's your call whether you want to battle golden ants, silver spiders, or purple ants in the end.

You should be able to destroy all of the exits before your men perish. When that happens, you might have a satellite blaster and strafe plan left to thin out the incoming swarm, but eventually you'll have to get in your vehicle and take them on personally.

Recommended equipment:

• 2500 armour
  
• Tempest S2 / Tempest S1A
  
• Strafe Plan B / Strafe Plan C
  
• EF31 Nereid S

Throw your Stafe Plan slightly left so it hits towards the left bee exit. This will hit/distract bees coming from there. Behind you is a microscopic park wth a single tree, call your Nereid there. This all needs to happen very fast, after which you should put as much distance between yourself and your enemy as is reasonable.

Ideally, no bees will harass you until you chopper arrives, but you should be able to deal with just one. When it does, call Tempest and then enter it, heading for the top of the hospital in as direct of a path as you can manage. Hold the trigger for the machinegun the whole way just in case it locks onto something, and hopefully takes care of any pursuing enemies. Once on the rooftop, direct your Tempest between the three left-most exits. The position needs to be pretty precise, but if you're using S1A you'll have a lot more radius and leniency to work with.

Try to call your strafe plan before Tempest impact, so that it gets reloaded and can be re-used right away. The purpose is to help your NPCs with bees through firepower and distraction. Without regular strafes, your NPCs will not survive as long as you need them to.

Call a second Tempest between the three right-most exits, then the middle one, trying to take out as many enemies and as few NPCs as you can.

Recommended equipment:

• 2000 armour
  
• 2x Strafe Plan C
  
• Epsilon Armored Blast Railgun E
  
• One teammate capable of handling insects.

Keep throwing stafe plans staggered towards the three dropships for the entire mission. This will take care of the drones and eventually kill the topmost dropship.

Call your tank and have the rest of your team hold off insects. Stand where your tank will appear and watch the left side for incoming hector artillery. When you see the projectile on its way, dodge a few jumps and let it destroy the highway. Jump down to your tank.

Use the tank to destroy both hectors and keep calling strafe plans towards the ships. The top ship should die on its own, but the lower ones you'll have to finish off with your tank. Just move in closer with your teammates and do that.

Your teammates should focus entirely on keeping ants away. Everything else is your job.

• A Ranger can use Nova Buster ZD to instantly finish off the frontmost dropship if they're quick and their aim is true. If you have extra teammates they could even bring two and take down two dropships that way.
  
• A Ranger can bring reverse shooter to keep themselves and the squad alive. Most of the threat after the hectors will be chip damage.
  
• Fencers are extremely efficient at holding all of the aggro of the insects and battling them indefinitely.
  
• Wing Divers can assault the dropships with Rapier.

Recommended equipment:

• 1000 armour
  
• Strafe Plan C
  
• Life Vendor ZD
  
• Epsilon Armour Blast Railgun

For the purposes of this mission, you start at the south end of the map facing north.

Recruit all of the men and head west to the first building after the park. There should be a nice three-way alley to cower inside of with ample room for your tank. Park inside there with all of your men and start shootin an elite ship.

Call strafe plans when you're nice and swarmed, spacing them out roughly so one is half-reloaded by the time you use the other one. Always call them from the middle of the alley in the direction of the dropship. If executed correctly, one strafe plan should be able to trigger the dropship opening, then fly over and pepper it. With the aid of a couple of tank shots, you should be able to bring it down before the wave of elites get to fly out of it.

Concentrate your tank shots on the elite drones, flying vehicles if none are available. Sometimes you'll have to refresh your tank and can do so by calling it on the south side, then backing it into the alley.

The life vendors are for keeping your tank and your men alive. One at a time should be plenty. Keep an eye on your men's health.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 Armour
  
• Decoy [Red]
  
• Limpet Sniper ZD
  
• EF31 Fire Nereid

Call your helicopter and take off. You can snipe hectors while awaiting the drop.Land on the dropship in the bottom of the map. Snipe as many dropships as you can from that position. The furthest ones are more difficult to hit, but the men present there will be able to aid with them.

There should be one at the end that's too low down to hit, with a hector guarding it. Snipe the hector, place two decoys and call your helicopter. Right before entering, activate the decoys and place the final one. This will allow you to briefly get out of your helicopter and acivate that least decoy in order to extend the effective duration. Just fly over to the dropship and destroy it.

When only the bottom dropship remains, bomb the gathering under the dropship, then fly over to the men so you can recruit them. If no men remain, you'll have to get daring, fly over to somewhere, place decoys, then fly back to the ship and destroy it while the insects are hunting the decoys.

Your most dangerous opponent in this mission will be the ragdoll physics. If you get hit by a hector blast, you'll get knocked over and keep rolling for around half a minute due to the swirling of the ship keeping you in motion. The same thing will happen to called in helicopters if they land wrongly. The box will refuse to open until it comes to a standstill, and might even slide off. For this reason, you don't want to call the helicopter in the middle of the ship, but a bit off-center where it's flatter.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 Armour
  
• 2x ZEXR-Gun
  
• Naegling Self-Propelled Rocket D1

Soon into this mission, air raids will stop working, and you will only be able to call in one vehicle early on, so you'll be relying primarily on the turrets for this.

Call your vehicle, set up turrets, deal with the initial wave of dragons. Spend most of your time taking cover near building walls, but within range of your turrets so they can save you should get snatched. A lot of NPCs will call in for support, but you are unlikely to make it in time to save them. Instead, stay where you started and hold your ground there until only the final, unprovoked wave remains. Attract attention using your vehicle, but don't use it for general combat. Try to conserve your vehicle, keeping it stashed away from the fighting.

For the final wave at the plaza, place turrets on top of the tram platforms, then retreat under the platform and activate. At this point it's a matter of dodging and turret management. The turrets will hit better if you can place them outside or on top of the platforms, but you need to stick under the platforms to survive. Having one or two turrets under the platform can save you from being snatched. additionally.

Beware the holes in the platform, as fire can get through. It's entirely possible to get unlucky at this point and killed immediately, but the dragons will die from the turrets just as quickly. Stick around your men.

Recommended equipment:

• 2000 Armour
  
• ZEXR-Gun
  
• Limpet Sniper ZD

Recruit all the men, place turrets in the valley, activate them, then retreat into the clearing behind you.

Your men and the turrets should be able to take care of the brunt of the dragons. If any of the deroys attack at this stage, take them out by shooting their centers out as quickly as possible.

Once things have calmed down, reload everything and provoke any deroys by shooting their knees poking over the hills, then finish them off.

Once that's done, mop up the stage.

Recommended equipment:

• 200 armour
  
• Power Assist Gun MG or Power Post ZM
  
• Life Beacon Gun or Life Vendor
  
• BM03 Vegalta Firelord

Call your Firelord. When it arrives, put a power assist on it. Walk directly towards the fortress hatch, then attack the hatch as you get the opportunity to do it. If you use your jumpjets, you can hit with more pellets with the Firelord's Canister Shot and even get some damage in with the flamethrowers.

Clear out ants and hectors as needed.

The life support equipment is for getting out of a hairy situation or directly before making your siege, just in case.


Recommended equipment:

• 3000 armour
  
• ZEXR-Gun
  
• C70 Bomb
  
• Bazelart Vulture F

Run ahead and place turrets. Activate, recruit the squad of wing divers, then retreat back to the square where you started. When you can afford it, call the helicopter.

Attach all of your C70 Bombs on top of the helicopters, then take off. Destroy the two robots and the gatling cannon on the fortress, as this will help your men survive.

Enter the hatch when it opens. Use your napalm launchers and lasers to damage the hatch whenever it is open. This may be difficult to control and will take some practice.

The fortress enters its second phase when it starts dropping hectors or starts shooting lasers. Once you notice that, drop from the helicopter and detonate the bombs after you've fallen a safe distance. The fortress should now be destroyed. Aid your men cleaning up using turrets.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 armour
  
• 2x ZEXR-Gun
  
• EF24 Bazelart Powered

Set up turrets where you start. Call in the helicopter and take off as soon as you can.

Fly over to the hector guarding the ant exit on the right side, destroying it first. If it's present when the Wing Diver backup appears, it will spawn golden ants. Continue to the spider exit at the back and give it the same treatment. After it's clear, this is a good spot to refresh your helicopter if you need it.

Loop around to the red ants and destroy the exit, then return to the beginning to fight all the shieldbearers gathered around the final ant exit. Your helicopter might not survive the ordeal, but that's why you brought all your turrets. Get airborne again as soon as possible to finish cleaning up.

• 4000 armour
  
• Roller Bomb DZ
  
• C70 Bomb
  
• Armored Vehicle Grape RZ

Call your grape. When it arrives, load it up with 4-6 bombs. Make your way to the red ant spawner on the left flank and plant 4 bombs at the exit, using grape to clear any enemies that try to stop you.

Proceed to the enemy's rear line where the spider spawner is next to a sleeping hector. By rolling the grape in you can blow both of those up along with the red spawner from earlier. This gets rid of the two biggest threats to an air raider in the mission. Blowing those two spawners up will trigger golds to spawn from the other two exits, but fortunately wing diver reinforcements should've arrived by now.

Proceed along the valley until you get to the intersection. From there you should have a clear shot at an ant spawner with wing divers nearby covering you. Shoot it down, then turn around and head back to the clearing.

If your grape is gone or damaged at this point, call a new one. The final step is to load this grape with C70 and blow the last exit up. After that, it's a matter of fighting off the remaining insects using rollers bombs. You'll want to have recruited as many wing diver squads as you can before this point.

If there are any robots left, it should be relatively easy to handle them at this point.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 Armour
  
• 2x Strafe Plan C
  
• Armored Vehicle Grape RZ

Call your vehicle and start firing at the hive. When the bees starts swarming you, throw one strafe plan. When red bees started appearing, throw the other one. Keep alternating strafe plans as you can afford them and are being swarmed. Make sure the plans are aimed at the hive.

The hive should go down quckly.

Recommended equipment:

• 5000 armour
  
• Splendor Shot AX or ZEXR-Gun
  
• ZEXR-Gun
  
• Depth Crawler IV Custom

Place turrets where you start to defend yourself. Attack the pit by either throwing turrets down or peppering it with Splendor Shot. Once clear, descend and recruit all the men and wing divers.

Place turrets at the opening to the great hall with the next wave. Activate, then call and get in your depth crawler. Move up the walls and start tapping rockets downwards. Using the light from the explosions, locate the spider kings and hammer them with full force until they're both dead.

Jump out of the crawler and back down to the bridge. Retreat back to the pit where you started if you need to heal or reload weaponry, then go back, deploy fresh turrets, and get back up on the wall with Depth Crawler. Using rockets conservatively, you should be able to mop up the remainder of the mission.

Recommended equipment:

• 200 armour
  
• Elerctormagnetic Prison
  
• Offensive Territory
  
• Bazelart Vulture 2

Don't recruit anyone. Flank your men and tanks to the right and place the prisons so one line covers you men, two lanes cover the tanks. Place your offensive territory so that it buffs everyone, then run over the bridge to safety. Call and take off in your chopper as soon as the first deroy dies.

Take off, hover at deroy height, kill the deroys with your chopper. Land and call a new chopper between waves. You'll have time to reload and replace the prisons protecting the men while you wait for the second chopper, as well as putting a new offensive territory.


Optionally, save the last deroy to pick up items. It'll mostly target your men. A bit more than 200 armour may be needed in case of stray hits.

Recommended equipment:

• ZERA-Gun
  
• Artillery C (Air Whale) or Satellite Blaster C
  
• Epsilon Armor Blast Railgun

For the purposes of this mission, you start north of the bridge, facing south where all the dragons are.

Throw a tank east. Recruit the men, then get in the tank and drive all the way to the east border of the map. Plant your turrets on the columns of the bridge, then cross the bridge to get to the lower end and snipe down a dragon in order to get attention. If you're having difficulty hitting the dragon, drive up close until you can get a better shot, then retreat to the bridge once you have aggro.

Park the tank in the small pedestrian tunnel under the bridge, slightly slanted so that you can use either machine gun to shoot outside. When dragons swarm you, call the air raid directly on your position. This will kill dragons on top of the bridge without harming you. As much as you can, stay inside of the machine guns, keeping you immune to grabs and capable of attacking dragons in the park outside.

When very few dragons remain, active the turrets and drive outside to mop up. With everything clear, you can reload your turrets, pick up boxes, and call a new tank.

Repeat this process until the mission is cleared.

If you're having problems with this mission, it's because you're not using a Bazelart.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 Armor
  
• 2x Strafe Plan C
  
• Epsilon Armored Railgun Blast E

Retreat behind the parking lot without recruiting anybody. Call a tank there. Once it arrives, start staggering Strafe Plan C. What that entails is that your first throw one, wait for the lines appear on the map, and then throw another one. The shields are so massive that the planes will fly right underneath them and largely ignore the shields entirely.

Snipe down the queens attacking your men. For each queen you kill, call a fresh tank and stagger up your new set of Strafe Plans. Also shoot down hectors when you have the opportunity, although your Strafe Plans will probably get most of them.

Once everything's settled, recruit anyone left alive and drive around for a cleanup.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 armour
  
• ZEXR-Gun
  
• Strafe Plan C
  
• Walking Fortress Balam F

Use Strafe Plan to kill most of the waves, then ZEXR-Gun to clean them up. Call Balam when you can to attract and punch the dragons.

The toughest part will be cleaning up the last ants and spiders in the final wave, but all in all it's a very easy clear for Air Raider.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 armour
  
• Strafe Plan C
  
• Satellite Blaster E
  
• Epsilon Armour Railgun Blast E

Send a strafe plan inside the shield, call your tank. Drive the tank into the valley and blow up everything. Deroys are a priority if you can get a shot at them. Call Strafe Plans as you can afford them.

Once everything has been shot down, prop your tank up against a cliff so you can aim it at the Brain and start shooting. Once you notice the Earth Eaters falling, aim the Satellite Blaster at the Brain, which will finish it off and make it retreat. The Brain fleeing will deactivate all of the cannons, leaving you to deal only with the Flying Vehicles.

Shoot down all the hatches by finding cliffs to drive up against allowing you to aim up, and utilize Strafe Plan as often as you can to deal with the Vehicles.

Recommended equipment:

• Satellite Blaster E
  
• ZEXR-Gun
  
• Epsilon Armored Railgun Blast E

Call your tank. Use the turrets to kill the first batch of dragons. Reload the turrets before they're all dead.

When the black dragon arrives, wait for him to fly slow or stand still, or make stagger him by shooting his wing with your tank. Aim a satellite blaster at his wing. If your aim is thrue, Satellite Blaster will stunlock him for its duration. You can help kill the dragon with your tank, but make sure to reload your turrets as much as you can

The second wave is more of the same, but more frantic since there are two black dragons.

Recommended equipment:

• 3000 Armor
  
• 2x Strafe Plan C
  
• Epsilon Armor Blast Railgun

Stagger strafe plans directly towards Argo for as long as he is alive. Use your tank to shoot other dropships and hectors, in that priority.

When everything is dead, cease your air raids so that the flying vehicles can return and be destroyed by your men.

Recommended equipment:

• 5000 armour
  
• 2x ZEXR-Gun
  
• Epsilon Armour Blast Railgun E

There are no shortcuts in this mission. Maintain the turrets so there's always at least one set covering you. Shoot down one dropship at a time with your tank, starting your siege just as it opens, dealing with everything that retaliates as a consequence. Don't even look at any more dropships before every last flying vehicle, robot, and insect that's got aggro on you has been dealt with.

When everything else has been taken care off, carefully approach the Quadruped Fortress and shoot it down. Ideally, you'll be able to damage the fortress enough that the airstrike will outright kill it rather than bring it to the second phase.

See 36. Inferno

Recommended equipment:

• 4000 armour
  
• 2x Satellite Blaster E
  
• Epsilon Armour Blast Railgun E

For the purposes of this mission guide, you start the North edge of the map, with The Brain being to your South. This strategy requires precise execution and some luck, but it's still to our knowledge the fastest and easiest tactic available.

Quickly throw your tank eastward so it hits the middle of the slope on the park. Enter the park, then calll both satellite blasters at the cone at the bottom of The Brain before moving to your tank. Doing this sets up a number of things:

• Moving to the middle of the park is enough to trigger a squad of nearby wing divers.
  
• Quickly calling your tank gives you time to shoot down one weak point before the Brain dies.
  [*}The satellite blasters are more than enough to kill this first phase of the Brain.
  

Be on standby by your tank, then shoot down a weak spot. The only purpose this serves is to earn credits, but that'll come in handy next wave.

Slightly left of the brain is a hatch that will open before the others and spawn vehicles. Blow it up swiftly, then turn 90 degrees left to shoot the next hatch opening there. You'll hopefully have enough credits to call another tank, so throw one a bit further down the park, East towards the parking lot and wing divers.

Now shoot the brain, and stop for nothing. There'll only be a little bit of a wing exposed at first, but that's all you need. After 6 shots, the Brain should be hurt enough to end the phase. Drive next to your fresh tank, switch, and move towards the wing divers.

After recruiting the wing divers and making sure you're currently clear of lasers, call in both satellites on the Brain, aiming directly at it this time. It's not yet vulnerable, but it'll start getting hurt as soon as it is. Get back in your tank, start shooting down the new type of Earth Eaters, and keep driving to the edge of the map to spawn and recruit a group of rangers. Once you've earned credits, and made sure your surroundings are reasonably clear, call a tank at your position, then both blasters again on the Brain.

Keep driving to survive until the game tells you Mission Cleared.

And that's how to beat Inferno as an Air Raider

I hope you found this guide helpful, and will appreciate any feedback you may have, positive or otherwise. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask, and if any of the mission strategies don't work out for you, I'll happily demonstrate them in video form and add that to the guide.

If any missions you're having troubles with are not included, I can do that too.

Should you have any tips or tricks you find missing in the guide, do let me know and they'll be added.


If you have been, thanks for reading.