What a soldier decides without you
The developer’s pitch is that Defilade infantry are not puppets. The confirmed autonomous behaviors:
- Cover: almost every object is used as cover — walls, corners, trenches, trees, vehicles, even blown-off parts. Soldiers lean around corners and go prone in the open.
- Movement: they turn head-first, dive, crawl, roll, kneel and crouch-walk. Close firefights are fought from the ground.
- Rescue: they drag wounded comrades out of the open; medics use stretchers; if a medic is killed, the other medic drags the soldier; if a normal rescue fails, they try a rope rescue.
- Grenades: they throw enemy grenades back.
- Drones: they dive right before an FPV drone strike.
- Surrender: broken soldiers can surrender, and prisoners can be interrogated.
That is a lot of behavior you do not have to click. Your job is to put them in the right place, give them the right order and keep them supplied.
Fire teams and squad behavior
The October 22 update added a squad system:
- make squads and pick them with number keys;
- choose a formation, or let AUTO pick one for the ground ahead;
- squads split into fire teams — one covers while the other moves;
- squads fight their way to the destination cover to cover;
- orders include ATTACK MOVE and SECURE AREA, plus waypoints and Shift-click to add to a selection.
The practical use is a bounding overwatch: one fire team suppresses, the other moves; then swap. Do not send a whole squad across open ground in one click.
Ranks and veterans
Soldiers earn ranks. Veterans end up in full armour, and their rifles gain sights, lights and lasers as they rank up. The developer has not published the exact bonuses, but the design intent is clear: keep veterans alive.
That makes medics more important than they look. A rescued veteran keeps his rank; a dead one is replaced by a rookie. If you are trading squads one-for-one, you are losing experience even when the body count is even.
Medics and casualties
- Medics use stretchers to carry wounded soldiers.
- If one medic dies, the other drags the soldier.
- Soldiers will try a rope rescue if a normal rescue fails.
- Casualty recovery happens on the battlefield, not only at a building.
The counter is fire: if you keep the wounded under fire, the rescue attempt fails. That is why smoke, suppression and cover matter.
Prisoners and interrogation
Soldiers can surrender when broken. Captured soldiers can be interrogated, and they can spill live intel on you or the enemy. The Rebels can build tunnel networks and interrogate prisoners there.
For the player, that means a fight is not over when the enemy breaks: a surrender gives you information. We do not yet know the exact intel types or how long interrogation takes; that is a demo test.
Habits from other RTS games that backfire
- Attack-moving into the open. Defilade soldiers find cover, but they cannot survive a machine-gun nest in the open. Use waypoints through cover.
- Treating squads as one blob. Split into fire teams; one team fires while the other moves.
- Ignoring veterans. Ranks are lost on death; rescue the wounded.
- Forgetting prisoners. A surrendered enemy is intel; do not just shoot everything.
- Overusing manual micro. The soldiers handle cover and rescue; spend your clicks on positioning, orders and supply.
What the demo will tell us
- how strong the cover AI actually is;
- how often soldiers surrender and how interrogation works;
- the real rank bonuses;
- whether medics can keep up with a moving squad;
- how many soldiers a squad holds.
We will update this page on December 1 with demo observations.