To Our New Commanders, To prepare your journey to the front line, we have prepared a basic guide with some top tips to familiarize yourself with the world of Cantata so that you'll have an edge when leading the charge on the planet of Shoal. This serves as a top-level intro to the human faction and a very brief look at the surface level of Cantata but there’s so much for you to dive in and discover for yourselves. If you have any tips of your own to share or have other questions, please join our Discord community or leave a comment on this post. Best of luck on the battlefield! -Captain Kat
Top Tips for Cantata
#1 - Moving the Camera
To fly around the map like an imperial gunship, you can use the WASD keys or left click and drag to move around the screen. On top of that you have the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
#2 - Levelling Up
In the Cantata campaign, as you play through each chapter you will gain player levels through exploring, attacking units, and building out your regions. As you level up you gain more Action Points (AP), which allow you to do more with each turn!
#3 - Population Limits
Population Limit is the sum total of all your units’ population cost. This sum dictates how many units you can have at once and can be increased by taking over a region. You can find a specific unit's pop cost by hovering over the unit and seeing the number associated with it.
#4 - Controls
Speaking of turns, get used to the keyboard hot keys you can use, such as to end turn, which will help you become a Cantata pro in no time. Some of our most-used ones include to cycle through units with untaken actions and which will toggle region badges to help give you more detail when managing your regions and less relevant info when you’re focused on attacking.
#5 - Tooltips
If you have any doubts while playing the game, make the most of embedded tooltips to learn more about the systems in the game. In the settings you can choose how you want the tooltips to work with options to have them lock with a timer or .
#6 - Regions
You’ll notice the map is broken up into Regions and these regions are allocated according to who controls the territory. Green borders mean it belongs to you, the player. The white bordered regions represent neutral territory, and later on, you’ll encounter red bordered regions belonging to the enemy. Region ownership is based on pressure exerted by buildings, and units, see tip 12 for a bit more information on how that works!
#7 - Region Storage
By clicking the Region we can see our total storage and supply income to expect next turn. Buildings you construct will produce and consume resources. These resources are shared across regions you control.
#8 - Infrastructure
Regions are also restricted by having an infrastructure limit, so in order to expand your power and army, you must also expand your territory. Click anywhere in a region to see the UI panel which shows how many free building slots we can use. When a building has already been built in a region, a tick will be present to represent this. At the start of early Chapter 1 for example, the Headquarters will be taking up one of your slots.
#9 - Building UI
When you click any building, you are shown the health, available actions, and supply income available to that building. The health is shown as a green bar and once the health of a building reaches zero it is destroyed. Each building has its own unique set of actions which are shown in the centre panel - from the HQ for example, you can build new Conscript units or, if you have the available resources, generate an additional Action Point.
#10 - Unit UI
Lastly, let’s look at how units work! When you hover over or select a unit, the blue area indicates the movement range and the red area indicates the attack range. Similar to buildings, clicking on a unit will show the health, available actions, and the individual unit's storage capacity. Just like buildings, a unit's health is shown as a green bar and once the health of a unit reaches zero it is destroyed. Every unit has different ranges and abilities leading to different niches on the battlefield.
#11 - Ammo & Attacking
In order to attack, units need ammo. Ammo is a resource that is made by your supply network and can be picked up by a unit when in your region. Outside of regions controlled by yourself, units can transfer ammo between each other. Different units may use and need different ammo. You can check this information by looking at the individual Unit UI panel.
#12 - Conscripts
Conscripts are a cheap starter infantry unit for the humans and are also useful in taking over territory. For the humans, this is done by placing down a Royal Banner. However, as you notice, we need Alloys to do this. To gain access to our supply network outside of our own regions, we must place a storage shed first. After placing this we have access to our supply network as you can see to the right of our Unit Panel. This now allows us to build the Royal Banner and exert pressure on the region. If a region's pressure enters the positives, you will eventually gain control of that region.
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